Deals wrap: Nasdaq triumphant?
Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange unveiled a rival bid to buy NYSE Euronext for about $11.3 billion in cash and stock, a 19 percent premium to the offer made by German competitor Deutsche Boerse. The move could raise new antitrust questions as it would combine the two largest U.S. stock exchanges. The new offer is valued at $42.50 per share, Nasdaq and IntercontinentalExchange said. The offer represents a 19 percent premium to NYSE’s closing price on Thursday and is 27 percent above the company’s valuation before Deutsche Boerse’s $10.2 billion bid in February. Analysts were skeptical about whether Deutsche Boerse would launch a counterbid.
Citigroup might be uncomfortable sitting on information needed to determine whether the onetime successor to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett violated securities laws when he personally traded in shares of Lubrizol, which Berkshire acquired for $9 billion, but it doesn’t have to be damaging territory for Citi, writes Rob Cox.
No.1 concert promoter and ticketing company Live Nation Entertainment is in the running to buy the recorded music assets of Warner Music Group, the world’s third largest music company, according to a person familiar with the talks. Bids have come in valuing Warner Music Group at around $3 billion on an enterprise value basis, which includes both debt and equity.
Canadian satellite company Telesat Holdings is weighing takeover offers from EchoStar and Carlyle Group, and may decide on a possible sale in the coming days, according to Bloomberg. EchoStar agreed to buy Hughes Communications for $2 billion including debt in February.
Huffington Post columnist and non-executive board chair of the Mobius Life Science Fund Lucy Marcus compiled a list of the 100 Most Influential VCs, Angels and Investors for the new, social decade, writes PE Hub’s Mark Boslet. Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson at number 3 and blogger investor Paul Kedrosky at number 4 might not come as a surprise. But Kevin Rose, Digg founder, at the top of the chart and Twitter investor Chris Sacca number 2 are questionable, according to Boslet.
Deals wrap: Japan crisis may delay some IPOs
Extreme market volatility tends to make investors a jittery bunch. The deadly earthquakes and nuclear crisis in Japan will obviously have an immediate impact there, but the fallout from the catastrophe is expected to spread across the globe where it could delay or even cancel a slew of new share offerings and debt deals.
According to IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication, one major deal in the pipeline that’s at risk of cancellation is the planned $6-$8 billion London-Hong Kong IPO of Swiss commodity trading group, Glencore, a deal expected in May.
Institutional investors will be demanding a higher return on their investments, forcing stock and bond deals to expect lower valuations, or face being pulled all together. Glencore’s IPO may be the victim of bad timing.
Yesterday we told you about Nasdaq OMX Group’s desire to make a counterbid for NYSE Euronext. But there are significant hurdles that it must overcome if it wants to trump the $9 billion offer Deutsche Boerse made for the Big Board.
Nasdaq must find $5 billion in debt financing, account for a relatively steep $347.5 million termination fee on the NYSE-D.Boerse deal and team up with the IntercontinentalExchange, which would look to buy NYSE Euronext’s lucrative interest-rate futures business. All of this means, the deal is far from a certainty.
Finally, Peter Mycroft Psaras of Seeking Alpha takes an in-depth look at Warren Buffett’s purchase of Lubrizol. Psaras uses his own formula, which is based on Buffett’s Owner Earnings, to see if the Berkshire Hathaway CEO overpaid for the company.
Deals wrap: Buffett pulls the trigger
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway struck a deal to buy lubricants maker Lubrizol for $9 billion in cash to tap rising demand for chemicals used to operate engines and machinery. Shira Ovide of the Wall Street Journal takes a spin through Lubrizol’s fundamentals and businesses.
The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is shopping around its 66 percent stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team and the Toronto Raptors basketball team.
Venture capital investment in U.S. clean technology companies rose 46 percent to $5.1 billion last year after a big decline in 2009, according to a report by research firm Clean Edge.
Could Los Angeles-based Leonard Green & Partners do better than team up with owner-managers to buy discount chain 99 Cents Only? Bloomberg’s Tara Lachapelle and Rita Nazareth make a case for why a leveraged buyout of Dollar Tree may offer the biggest bang for the buck, citing Bloomberg data that Dollar Tree holds three times as much cash as Family Dollar, is more than twice as profitable as 99 Cents and generates 55 percent more income per dollar of sales than Big Lots.
