Deals wrap: Nokia rumors but no suitors
Nokia’s plunging share price and persistent speculation it might be a takeover target is far from attracting real suitors interested in saving the struggling mobile phone company, write Victoria Howley and Tarmo Virki.
General Motors is considering putting Opel up for sale again as management is losing confidence that the European arm will return to profitability, two German magazines reported. Here’s a timeline of the twists and turns in Opel’s ownership.
Former BP boss Tony Hayward and financier Nathaniel Rothschild aim to raise around $1.6 billion with a June listing of an acquisition vehicle that will target oil assets.
Samsonite, the world’s biggest luggage maker, narrowed the indicative price range of its Hong Kong initial public offer, the latest sign of weak investor appetite for richly-priced deals.
“While a handful of initial public offerings are hitting the market with a pop, many are landing with a thud,” reports the NYT’s DealBook.
Deals wrap: Bid for ING Direct USA
General Electric and Capital One have submitted bids for ING’s U.S. online banking operations in a deal worth about $9 billion, Bloomberg reports.
The frothy market for Internet IPOs is raising the specter of a bubble, underscoring how little has changed despite lawsuits and investigations in the wake of the 1990s dot-com craze.
Maple Group Acquisition Corp, which has gone hostile with its $3.7 billion offer for Toronto Stock Exchange operator TMX Group , is in talks to add at least three other financial-services companies to its consortium, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources.
BP is preparing to sell half of its 50 percent stake in TNK-BP to state-controlled Rosneft, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move represents an attempt to salvage a planned tie-up between BP and Rosneft, announced in January, and could be a negotiating tactic with AAR, the group of billionaires which owns the other half of TNK-BP, the Journal reports.
Chinese companies have stepped up acquisitions in Europe and the trend is expected to continue, reports the WSJ.
“In its quest to win approval of its $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA, AT&T just got a lot of help from its friends,” reports the New York Times.
Deals wrap: LinkedIn boosts IPO, pushes more air into bubble
LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, boosted the pricing of its initial public offering by 30 percent valuing the 9-year old company at a little over $4 billion, or about 17 times their 2010 revenue.
LinkedIn’s IPO, which is scheduled for Thursday, comes on the heels of what appears to be an unsuccessful offering Renren.
Earlier this month Renren, one of the biggest social networking sites in China, stock surged 29 percent in their debut but it has since dropped to below its IPO price.
The poor showing of Renren has not slowed investors appetite for a chance to gobble up another slice of the social networking pie. Two other Internet giants are expected to go public sometime in the near future. Groupon may be valued as high as $20 billion and Facebook could be north of $100 billion.
Is this the start of another tech bubble or will investors rue the day they passed on the social network pie?
Yesterday Deals wrap told you that BP was in talks about buying out its Russian partners in TNK-BP, in conjunction with state-controlled Rosneft, and other options to ease passage of a stalled share swap and Arctic exploration deal.
However today came news that the deal has collapsed. The tie-up unraveled because BP failed to mollify partners in its existing Russian venture TNK-BP. They argue the British company had no right to strike a new deal in the country without them.
Deals wrap: Nasdaq, ICE drop NYSE bid
Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) dropped their $11.1 billion bid for rival exchange NYSE Euronext after it became clear the deal would not gain approval from U.S. antitrust regulators. The companies first offered to buy the New York Stock Exchange parent on April 1, aiming to curb a proposed friendly merger with Deutsche Boerse that was worth $10.2 billion when first announced in February. Deutsche Boerse responded to the news of the dropped bid by saying it plans to continue to pursue a merger with the Big Board parent.
In other exchange merger news, a consortium of Canadian banks and pension funds launched a $3.7 billion bid for TMX Group in the hopes of keeping Canada’s largest stock exchange from falling under foreign ownership. The bid tops a $3 billion offer for the exchange operator from the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The LSE said it remains committed to its own merger proposal with the TMX despite the higher rival offer, but should its bid fail it could find itself to be a takeover target, analysts said.
U.S. chemicals group DuPont won its takeover battle for Danish food ingredients company Danisco. The $6.4 billion acquisition is a part of DuPont’s push into the food technology business that CEO Ellen Kullman says will “create an industry leader in industrial biosciences and nutrition and health.”
BP is in talks aimed at buying out its Russian partners in its TNK-BP joint venture and other options to help secure passage of a stalled share swap and Arctic exploration deal, sources close to the matter told Reuters.
Yahoo and Alibaba Group will have a tough time resolving their feud over the Chinese company’s transfer of a major Internet asset despite a joint statement from both companies that said they were working towards a resolution, writes Reuters correspondent Melanie Lee.
Deals wrap: The value of Groupon
Groupon is likely to pick Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to lead a second-half initial public offering that could value the fast-growing daily deals site at $15 billion to $20 billion, according to a source.
Commodity trader Glencore’s planned $12 billion London listing has long been seen as the first step to merging with Xstrata, in what could be the biggest mining takeover in history. The question for most analysts and investors since the IPO was confirmed is not if the deal happens but when — and how.
BP’s partners in its Russian venture TNK-BP rejected the UK oil major’s offer to settle a dispute caused by its $18 billion tie-up with Rosneft, casting further doubt on the deal.
The New York Times reports that CVS Caremark is under pressure from consumer groups and shareholders to split up the merger of the drugstore chain and the pharmacy benefits manager. Regulators are also investigating whether the company used anticompetitive behavior.
Deals wrap: Glencore’s $12.1 billion IPO
Glencore is looking to raise up to $12.1 billion for its initial public offering in a duel listing that will boost firepower for deals at the height of the resource boom. The long-awaited details of the offer, set to be the largest ever in London, were outlined in an intention-to-float that confirmed an earlier Reuters story. However, the company did not name a new non-executive chairman, a requirement for its listing.
NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse are looking at several options to win support for their $10.2 billion deal, including paying special dividends to shareholders, according to sources briefed on the matter. The idea of paying the special dividends is to win shareholders support over an unsolicited higher offer from Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange Inc (ICE). While NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse currently pay dividends, Nasdaq and ICE do not.
BP and Rosneft agreed to extend the deadline for their swap agreement by one month as the British oil producer tries to salvage the $7.8 billion deal. BP’s tie-up with Rosneft is already blocked by a court injunction secured by the company’s Russian partners in its TNK-BP venture.
Car-sharing service ZipCar is expected to go public later this week. In this interview, a Fortune.com reporter asked what ZipCar’s IPO would mean for the burgeoning car-sharing industry.
Deals wrap: Schneider fails to quash Tyco buyout rumors
Schneider Electric issued a statement denying it had planned to buy U.S. conglomerate Tyco International, but this did little to kill the buyout talks as a source with knowledge of the matter said the French engineering group held earlier talks with Tyco. Shares of Schneider initially rose more than 2 percent after the denial but dropped after analysts made comments speculating a tie-up may be coming soon, and is expected to weigh on shares in the long term.
BP’s tie-up with Rosneft was at risk of collapse on Wednesday as the state-controlled Russian oil major said it would not extend a Thursday deadline on a $16 billion share swap. The possible failure of the deal would hurt CEO Bob Dudley, who on Thursday faces shareholders angered by the Gulf of Mexico disaster as BP holds its annual general meeting.
MGM has disclosed the planned structure of its initial public offering in the Macau casino market, reaching an agreement with co-owner Pansy Ho. In the agreement, Ho would receive a 29 percent stake in the company, MGM China Holdings Ltd. An IPO would make MGM Macau the last of Macau’s six gambling licensees to go public.
Packaging company Silgan Holdings said it will acquire Graham Packaging in a $4.1 billion deal as it seeks to grow abroad. The deal will close in the second half of the year and is expected to generate free cash flow of $500 million and add to Silgan’s first-year earnings.
The Malkin family, who control New York’s Empire State Building is planning to create a publicly traded real estate company featuring the iconic building, according to sources reported in the New York Times. The 102-story Art Deco skyscraper is a hot spot for tourists, but the Malkins will have to clear a number of hurdles before the plans can go through, including gaining the support of its principle partner.
Deals wrap: BP’s Rosneft deal on the rocks?
The planned $18 billion deal between BP and Rosneft was left even more uncertain after its chief backer Igor Sechin stepped down as Rosneft’s chairman. Sechin, who is also Russia’s deputy prime minster quit after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the removal of ministers from the board of state companies. BP’s tie-up with Rosneft is already blocked by a court injunction secured by the company’s Russian partners in its TNK-BP venture.
HP held talks with software company Tibco about a possible acquisition until about two weeks ago, according to sources familiar with the matter. The talks come as new CEO Leo Apotheker is expected to revitalize the company’s software division via acquisitions, which only accounts for 3 percent of its revenue. It is not clear if the talks will resume. (more…)
Deals wrap: Powering up China’s IPO market
Sinovel, China’s top wind turbine producer, plans to raise up to $1.4 billion in one of the most expensive main board IPOs in Shanghai. The listing may well be a test for China’s IPO market, which had a mixed performance late last year.
Shares in BP hit a six-month high after reports rival Royal Dutch Shell considered a takeover bid, and that economic damages from its oil spill will be lower than forecast.
Brazil’s Petrobras offered to buy Eni’s 33.3 percent stake in Portuguese oil company Galp for 4.7 billion, business daily Diario Economico reported without citing sources.
Goldman Sachs’ old-school Facebook deal isn’t all rosy, writes Breakingviews columnist Robert Cyran. A MarketWatch blog argues that Facebook’s valuation is insane, but not crazy.
By delaying an IPO, and the oversight an offering entails, Facebook is pursuing a strategy which was unthinkable just a few years ago, writes the New York Times.
Deals wrap: Cutting assets to pay for slick
BP is looking to sell assets to help pay for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A source says BP is in talks with U.S. oil and gas company Apache Corp. The Sunday Times reported that the talks involved $12 billion in assets. View article
Aon, the world’s largest insurance brokerage, said it will acquire human-resource service company Hewitt Associates for about $4.9 billion in cash and stock to beef up its consulting business. The Aon-Hewitt deal is the second major deal in the consultancy space in a year. View article
If you are feeling bullish, then you’re in agreement Warren Buffett, Ken Fisher, Leon Cooperman and John Paulson. The WSJ takes a look at what these four market heavyweights are buying. View WSJ article
Turns out Carl Icahn’s son, Brett Icahn, has played a large role in the hostile takeover attempt for Lions Gate Entertainment. View WSJ article More coverage
Need cash? Check out this early-stage tech investor ecosystem graphic, with email addresses of those who have the cash. View peHUB article
