Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Skeletons in the closet, sprawling ownership stymie Gulf bank consolidation
Anyone waiting for Gulf banks to consolidate — a long talked about prospect — can forget about it for now.
With debt markets shut, leaving only pricey equity financing, budding suitors are standing frozen, unable to make a commitment.
But the lack of reasonable financing for mergers is not the only obstacle, according to Frederick Stonehouse, head of strategic mergers and acquisitions at Bahrain’s Unicorn Investment Bank .
Valuing the assets of privately-owned banks, the best candidates for consolidation, is no easy task.
Expect action in Japanese M&A
After falling off a cliff at the start of this year as the global financial crisis gripped, mergers and acquisitions by Japanese companies overseas are likely to pick up again in the second half of this year, according to boutique Japanese M&A advisory firm Recof Corp.
There won’t be a flood of deals, Recof President Hikari Imai says, but the ones there are, are likely to be chunky as Japanese companies expand their frontiers beyond domestic markets where growth prospects are limited.
IBM: No Sun, but there are other fish in the sea
IBM’s Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge didn’t have much to say about Oracle’s planned purchase of Sun Microsystems at the Reuters Global Technology Summit.
I don’t see that much has changed in this. They have been partnering for decades. It doesn’t fundamentally change the position” in the industry.
Audio – Kinross in the ‘Sweet Spot’
In the M&A world, this is where you want to be
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Kinross Gold’s CEO Tye Burt said at the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit on Wednesday that as far as mergers and acquisitions go, his company is in a pretty good place — there are more deals hitting his desk, sellers are getting more motivated and Kinross, the third-largest of the Canadian gold miners, has the cash to do a little shopping.
While Burt did not expect to be party to one of those huge mega-deals, he did indicate the company was keeping its options open — and was listening for bargains.
