Rumours of predatory interest in the UK utility sector has been swirling for a few weeks now with several names mentioned including United Utilities and Severn Trent.
However, the speculation has now focused on one company:
The future of Saab was in doubt on Tuesday after a consortium led by Swedish niche carmaker Koenigsegg pulled out of talks to buy General Motors’ premium car brand. Koenigsegg blamed the move on delays in closing the deal after months of negotiations with the Swedish government over financial support.
Swiss bank UBS has responded to Monday’s report from Standard & Poor’s, which you may recall ranked 45 of the world’s leading banks according to their risk-adjusted capital (RAC) ratios.
By S&P’s reckoning,
It’s over.
After a two and half year search, the UK’s biggest sports retailer has finally found someone brave enough to take on the job of chairman.
From RNS on Tuesday.
Sports Direct International plc today announces the appointment of Dr Keith Hellawell QPM as non-executive Chairman of the Board with immediate effect.
Maybe Jorge Cosmen, deputy chairman of National Express, should have waved this paper in front of the board of the UK transport group.
Transactions involving companies sharing board members perform significantly better than other deals,
Please stop clogging up the Regulatory News Service with puffery like this:
Exhibit A Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, Calif. - Nov. 24, 2009 - Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise,
Here’s a blast from the past.
Remember Informa, publisher of the Lloyd’s List and The Earthmover & Civil Contractor Magazine?
The last time Alphaville wrote about the company it was the subject of a leveraged takeover bid from a private equity consortium,
Elsewhere on Tuesday,
- Five suggestions for fixing Wall Street.
- “Roubini’s okay but he’s not as good as me”.
- The world according to Americans.
- Citi: the commodity collapse could be “Subprime Part II”.
Breaking pre-market news on Tuesday,
- Lloyds Banking Group announces terms of 1.34 for 1 rights issue, priced at 37p per share - statement.
- Informa confirms it is in discussions about acquiring Springer Science and Business Media - statement.
Informa, publisher of Lloyd’s List, has held talks with its rival Springer Science and Business Media over buying the German academic publisher whose private equity owners are looking to sell the whole business at a reduced valuation.
China’s Haitong Securities has become the first mainland brokerage to acquire an overseas rival after agreeing to buy Hong Kong’s Taifook Securities for at least HK$1.8bn (US$235m). The deal is likely to be followed by other cash-rich mainland groups,
A consortium led by an Abu Dhabi investment fund and a group led by a US builder were on Monday selected as preferred bidders for a controlling stake in South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering & Construction.
The Cosmen family, the biggest shareholder in National Express, has increased its shareholding in the UK transport group ahead of a Friday vote that will decide whether NatEx’s £360m rights issue goes ahead.
Activist investor Carl Icahn has offered $156.5m to acquire the partially built Fontainebleau Las Vegas resort, which has been stalled in bankruptcy court since June, reports Reuters. At a bankruptcy court hearing on Monday in Miami,
Heritage Oil has called off its proposed $6bn deal to merge with Turkey’s Genel Enerji in the wake of its agreement to sell its Ugandan oil fields to Eni, the Italian energy group. The UK group on Sunday sealed a deal with Eni worth $1.35bn in cash for the Ugandan assets,
What a difference a week makes.
Heritage Oil interim management statement, Tuesday, November 17:
Discussions with Genel are continuing with the terms of the merger nearing formal agreement. Both sides remain committed to completing the proposed transaction.
Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Heritage Oil-Genel merger terminated, Heritage issues letter of intent to sell its Ugandan assets to Eni for $1.3bn - statement.
- Lloyds Banking Group says it has accepted offers to exchange £8.8bn of non-US securities - statement.
Cadbury is expecting a “white knight” bid from Hershey if the US confectioner can arrange the financing for a takeover offer. The British firm, fending off an approach from Kraft, sees commercial logic in an alternative deal with Hershey,
Reliance Industries, India’s biggest listed company, plans to offer $10bn for a controlling stake in LyondellBasell, the bankrupt Dutch-based petrochemical giant, in what would be one of the largest overseas acquisitions by an Indian group. The scale of the bid – and its all-cash nature – would seem to highlight the growing confidence of Indian companies on the global stage,
Spain’s BBVA is set to exercise an option to increase its stake in China Citic Bank from 10 per cent to 15 per cent, cementing its position as one of the leading European investors in mainland Chinese banking.
Lloyds Banking Group is considering developing a new stockbroking business with Evolution, the independent brokerage in which it already holds a 10 per cent stake, the Times reported.
The hurdles to a Hershey-Cadbury tie-up are by now well aired.
Hershey has a smaller market cap than Cadbury, would need to take on crippling amounts of debt to finance a deal, and the Hershey Charitable Trust would be loath to relinquish control in any new company.
Elsewhere on Friday,
- Investing fads and themes by year, 1996 to present.
- Unintended consequences on Wall Street.
- Chart of the day: How the old gold bugs lost control.
- Analyst date night:
Breaking pre-market news on Friday,
- Gartmore announces intention to list on the LSE - statement.
- Nationwide Building Society posts half-year PBT of £143m - statement.
- Big shareholders ask Goldman Sachs to cut bonuses - WSJ (via Reuters).
Birds Eye Foods is being sold by its private equity owners for $1.3bn to Blackstone’s Pinnacle Foods, it was announced on Thursday. The deal, to be funded with $300m in additional equity from Blackstone and $1bn in debt,
Five private equity groups are among the first-round bidders for Matalan, the privately owned UK discount clothing retailer that is being auctioned with an estimated price tag of about £1.5bn. TPG, Blackstone,
US authorities blocked Minsheng, the Chinese bank, from acquiring a Californian lender in a deal that could have saved almost $300m of taxpayers’ money and $1.4bn from an industry insurance fund, it has emerged.
JPMorgan Cazenove on Thursday stressed that it saw scope to make more of the synergies between itself and the UK broker, as it confirmed details of a £1bn takeover deal. JPMorgan is paying 535p a share for Cazenove – 25p in the form of a dividend next month and the rest when the transaction closes early next year.The transaction consummates the joint venture,
A solution to facilitate a Cadbury-Hershey merger and repel Kraft’s $16.6bn hostile bid for the UK confectioner has been outlined in a letter to Cadbury CEO Todd Stitzer from the special situations team at brokerage GFI,
…and a few words.
There was, to put it mildly, an unusually high level of interest in Colgate Palmolive on Wednesday night.
Both in its shares:
And in its November and December call options:
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