The list of buyers for Nasdaq’s 31 percent stake in the LSE is shrinking. Singapore’s state investor Temasek has pulled out of the running and a group of Italian financial foundations were about to abandon plans to bid for up to 10 percent of the LSE, after the exchange’s management told them such a move would be seen as unfriendly. Germany’s Deutsche Boerse also said it was not interested in buying the stake, leaving the state-owned Qatar Investment Authority in the leading position for the deal.
 
The bidding war for Australian miner Consolidated Minerals is heating up, with the company recommending a revised A$1 billion ($840 million) offer from Palmary Enterprises. Palmary, controlled by Ukrainian billionaire Gennadiy Bogolyubov, upped its cash bid to A$4.50 from its previous A$3.95, trumping a bid of A$4.10 by investment firm Pallinghurst Resources. Shares in Consolidated, which controls about 10 percent of the world’s supply of steel-making resource manganese rose 2.9 percent to 12-year highs of A$4.63. Analysts said they expect to see higher bids as the manganese market stays hot.
    
The Deal Journal takes a look at how banks arranging the debt for KKR’s purchase of First Data are planning to package the paper they will end up with. Credit Suisse Group, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group, HSBC, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Merrill Lynch, will hold on to as much as $19 billion in loans and bonds supporting the deal. 
    
Private-equity firms are much better at wringing fees out of their investors than they are at earning profits at flagging businesses, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing a study by two professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
 
Foreign companies are not looking to bail out of Chinese stocks, though investors dumped shares of Chalco after aluminium giant Alcoa sold its stake for $2 billion and shares of PetroChina were the most-actively traded in Hong Kong, though only slightly lower after Warren Buffett sold a stake. Market participants put the sell-offs down to individual circumstances and said other foreign firms with big China stakes, such as banks and insurers, were in for the long haul. 
 

Picture: Reuters File