Breakingviews

AT&T is all dressed up with nowhere to go

By Robert Cyran

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

AT&T is all dressed up with nowhere to go. The telecom company had a $93 billion bid for Telefonica blocked by Madrid, according to a Spanish newspaper. The target has denied that it received any expression of interest. But the report is a sign of the problem AT&T faces: it has a lofty stock multiple, which makes M&A tempting, but it seems shut out of both domestic and foreign deals.

SoftBank’s bump for Sprint isn’t a knock-out

By Peter Thal Larsen

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

SoftBank’s raised bid for Sprint Nextel is no knock-out blow. The Japanese group has tweaked its offer for a controlling stake in the U.S. telco to give the target’s shareholders more value. But Sprint shareholders would retain a stake in a Sprint that has more debt than first envisaged. That erodes SoftBank’s key advantage as it seeks to combat a rival bid from leveraged counterbidder Dish Network.

Agnellis brace for Fiat-Chrysler merger endgame

By Olaf Storbeck

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Industrial groups go through a time of strength, a time of privilege and a time of vanity, the late Italian entrepreneur and Fiat Chairman Giovanni Agnelli once remarked. “For me the first is the only one that counts”, he added. His grandson John Elkann, the chairman and chief executive of Exor, the Agnelli family’s investment group through which it controls Fiat, seems to concur.

Double arbitrage validates China’s pork purchase

By John Foley

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

China has been rearing pigs for at least 6,000 years. Now its biggest pork producer is paying $4.7 billion to import them from the United States. What explains the reversal? It’s not just that richer consumers demand more meat, but that poor decisions by China’s planners have created a double arbitrage.

Grim reaper breathes life into moribund M&A market

By Jeffrey Goldfarb
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

The grim reaper is breathing life into the moribund M&A market. Service Corp International has agreed to buy rival Stewart Enterprises for $1.4 billion in a deal that combines the two largest U.S. funeral home and cemetery operators. Chief executives and shareholders look to be remarkably at peace with just this sort of transaction.

Marissa Mayer puts exclamation point back in Yahoo

By Jeffrey Goldfarb

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Marissa Mayer has made her mark on Yahoo in less than a year. The website chief’s $1.1 billion deal to buy blogging site Tumblr on Monday goes a long way to restoring the faded and vainglorious exclamation point to the company’s name.

Speech-tech firm’s M&A machine could go in reverse

By Robert Cyran

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Over the past decade, Nuance Communications has been on a frenetic shopping spree. The $6 billion firm now encompasses businesses ranging from medical transcription to powering Siri on the iPhone. But Nuance, the M&A machine, is sputtering. Margins are falling, the stock hasn’t advanced in five years, and debt is accumulating. Moreover, Carl Icahn recently upped his stake in the company from 9 percent to 11 percent in what could signal an end to acquisitions – even the start of a breakup.

Could Silver Lake quietly be rooting for Icahn?

By Jeffrey Goldfarb

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Carl Icahn may have a secret admirer. The uppity billionaire fired his latest salvo in the battle over Dell late last week, proposing a half-baked leveraged recapitalization. The plan could be a ploy to get Silver Lake Partners and founder Michael Dell to sweeten their $24.4 billion bid. It’s hard not to wonder, though, if the buyout firm isn’t quietly rooting for Icahn.

ENRC board needs to summon its poker skills

By Kevin Allison

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

ENRC’s independent directors need to practice their poker skills. They face the task of recommending or rejecting a possible bid for the hapless miner from a consortium of its biggest shareholders. The directors’ hand is weak, but they shouldn’t just fold.

BMC deal shows how activist playbook brings profit

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Elliott Management has once again pushed a technology firm into selling itself. This time BMC Software is going for $6.9 billion to a private equity group led by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital. At $46.25 a share, the 2 percent headline premium over Friday’s closing price may seem tiny. But that’s more than a 30 percent return for Elliott, adding to its record of similar successes at Novell, Packeteer and Blue Coat.