LONDON (Reuters) – Glencore will this week move into the final stage of its long-awaited $30 billion takeover of miner Xstrata, as shareholders are sent detailed documents on the deal, kicking off a last charm offensive ahead of July votes.

But Xstrata investors hoping for an improvement to the all-share offer are likely to be disappointed, at least for now.

That is because of technical changes set to support Glencore shares over the coming weeks, share sales by prominent naysayers and stake-building by Qatar, whose sovereign wealth fund now has more than 9 percent of Xstrata and is expected to back the deal.

Glencore, which already owns almost 34 percent of the miner, is offering 2.8 new shares for every Xstrata share held to conclude its long-standing plan to create an integrated mining and trading powerhouse.

Those terms will likely be confirmed in the documents, due out by Thursday, though Glencore can still increase the bid up until a few days before shareholders vote.

“Qatar seems reasonably likely to approve the 2.8 ratio. So given that, the chances of an increase in the ratio from 2.8 to something modestly above have probably lessened slightly, and the probability the deal will get done has increased,” Nik Stanojevic, an analyst at Brewin Dolphin, said.

Glencore shares closed on Friday at almost 346 pence, with Xstrata at about 912 pence, below the level implied by the offer.

LONDON (Reuters) – Anthony Parsons, vice-chairman of British mergers and acquisitions at Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), has left to join boutique investment bank Greenhill & Co (GHL.N: Quote, Profile, Research), two people familiar with the matter said.

Parsons, one of the lead advisers to security firm G4S Plc (GFS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) on its failed $8.2 billion bid last year for Danish cleaning company ISS, joins a string of senior bankers leaving major banks for boutiques, a trend driven by generational change and smaller bonuses in the years since the financial crisis.

Veteran Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) dealmaker Yoel Zaoui retired in April, and peers have speculated that he could set up his own firm.

Deutsche Bank reshuffled its UK advisory business last summer before the G4S deal was scuppered by opposition from shareholders.

Parsons took up the vice-chairman role, which meant he was focused on client relationships, ceding management to Richard Sheppard as head of UK mergers and acquisitions.

According to Thomson Reuters data, Deutsche Bank has been the sixth most active adviser in UK M&A since 2005, with a 20 percent share of the market.

Greenhill was the 22nd most active UK M&A adviser during that period, though boutiques generally do far fewer deals than large global firms.

May 22 (Reuters) – Belgium’s largest cable operator Telenet is talking to private equity firms about making a joint bid for BASE, the country’s third-biggest mobile phone company, people familiar with the process told Reuters.

Blackstone, Cinven, Providence, Bain and KKR are among possible partners, the people said.

“Every private equity player would try to team up with Telenet as there is no trade rival that could offer the same synergies here,” said a person at one of the interested private equity firms.

Dutch telecom group KPN could raise between 1.6 billion and 1.8 billion euros ($2.3 billion) from the sale of BASE, based on 280 million euros of estimated EBITDA for 2012, and multiples of between 5.5 and 6.5 times.

KPN is weighing a sale of the Belgian business at the same time as it seeks ways to counter America Movil’s tender offer for 28 percent of its shares, which it sees as undervalued.

It is not clear whether KPN’s broader defence will slow the BASE sales process, in which presentations to potential bidders were initially slated to go out in the next two or three weeks.

KPN declined to comment.

LONDON, May 22 (Reuters) – Glencore’s bruised stock could get a boost after a lock-up on a large slice of employees’ shares expires, in a welcome lift for the commodities trader as its $30 billion bid for miner Xstrata nears the final stages.

The release on Thursday of 2.7 billion shares – a year after Glencore’s record stock market debut – could mean a technical “squeeze” on the stock, analysts said. The increase in shares available to be traded translates into a greater weighting in the FTSE 100 index, prompting index-tracking funds to buy more shares.

With Glencore’s roughly 500 employee shareholders mostly expected to hang on to their stock, that could be a boon for Glencore, preparing to send investors the details of its all-share offer for Xstrata, in which it is already the top investor.

Glencore, the world’s largest diversified commodities trader, is expected to send documents to shareholders by the end of May, with a vote on the deal to follow weeks later.

“The consensus view is that (Glencore Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg) knows his shares may rally in the middle of next month, then there is the vote probably in July,” one hedge fund adviser said. “These things are not coincidental.”

The adviser added a recent drop in commodities and mining stocks on fresh worries over Chinese growth and the impact of Greek political turmoil – the UK mining index is down almost 16 percent so far this month – would also help Glencore justify its current offer of 2.8 new shares for every Xstrata share held.

“The timing of this offer around the index event is no coincidence, Glencore and its advisers planned this in the hope that the market will do most of their work to sell the deal - i.e. push Glencore up,” another hedge fund adviser said.

LONDON (Reuters) – Addressing Nokia Oyj employees in January 2011, Chief Executive Stephen Elop – at that point only four months into the job – dramatized the company’s predicament by comparing it to standing on a burning platform.

Nearly a year and a half on, and with Nokia’s Lumia mobile phone range failing so far to revive sales, its position still looks frail. Its shares have lost 90 percent in five years and its debt is rated junk by two of the three major ratings agencies.

Might Microsoft Corp, Elop’s former employer and whose software Lumia is based on, have to step in to help Nokia out, seeing the Finnish company as a valuable point of entry into the cellphone market?

Analysts have attributed Nokia’s decline in large part to its late response to Apple Inc, whose iPhone redefined the smartphone market in 2007, and some see a marriage with Microsoft as possibly a last chance to turn the group around.

For Microsoft the relationship is important, because Nokia was its first major break into the smartphone market after a decade of heavy investment. During that period other cellphone makers either chose to use their own software – as did Apple – or favored Google Inc’s Android.

“If Nokia ends up in financial difficulties I believe the helping hand would be there,” said Sami Sarkamies, an analyst at Nordea.

Nokia and Microsoft declined to comment.

LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) – Dexia’s planned sale of Turkish unit Denizbank will not proceed until after an expected management change at the bailed-out Franco-Belgian bank, sources familiar with the situation said.

The existing team of Chief Executive Pierre Mariani has been pushing unsuccessfully for buyers to pay at least 3 billion euros ($3.95 billion), but speculation about a management shake-up means the process has lost impetus.

Mariani has been struggling to persuade bidders to meet this price, banking sources said, because potential buyers see Dexia as a distressed seller with a weak bargaining position.

Mariani put Turkey’s sixth-biggest private bank on the block following a second state rescue in October 2011, part of a wider restructuring which also involves the sale of its $1 billion asset management arm.

Dexia is being dismantled and its assets sold after France, Belgium and Luxembourg had to bail it out in October, after it was crippled by the euro zone debt crisis when it was shut out of funding markets. [ID:nL5E7LK0HS]

However, haggling over price is not the only thing standing in the way of a deal. Uncertainty over who will lead the company could delay the process further as Mariani is now preparing to leave and hand over to a new team of Belgian managers, likely to be led by ex-Fortis head Karel De Boeck, the sources said.

“Dexia has now embarked on a split-up. This is not what Mariani had come for. The company needs someone with a different profile now,” said a source familiar with Dexia.

LONDON, May 2 (Reuters) – Spain is sounding out investment banks including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and UBS as it seeks a credible fix for its banks roiled by a collapse in real estate prices and now threatening the creditworthiness of Spain itself, sources familiar with the matter said.

Spain has repeatedly said it will not ask for European Union or IMF money to solve the problem of its banks, hit by billions of euros in losses after the bursting of a decade-long property bubble in 2008. Instead, the central bank is consulting about setting up a holding company to value and sell off the real estate assets.

Bankers say institutions in the running to advise Spain include those with experience of setting up Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) – a model which Spain could use - or in arranging Greece’s debt restructuring earlier this year.

Lazard, Blackstone and BNP Paribas advised on restructuring Greece’s debt. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America were among the main advisers to Ireland.

Credit Suisse, UBS, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Rothschild , Nomura and Deutsche Bank have also participated in government work through the financial crisis, according to Thomson Reuters data.

“They are debating ideas and being encouraged by the International Monetary Fund to do so,” said Pierre-Yves Bonnet, global head of financial institutions group at Societe Generale.

“But it is a very political decision as it means that they underestimated the necessary writeoffs in the first place.”

LONDON, May 2 (Reuters) – Spain is sounding out investment banks including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and UBS as it seeks a credible fix for its banks roiled by a collapse in real estate prices and now threatening the creditworthiness of Spain itself, sources familiar with the matter said.

Spain has repeatedly said it will not ask for European Union or IMF money to solve the problem of its banks, hit by billions of euros in losses after the bursting of a decade-long property bubble in 2008. Instead, the central bank is consulting about setting up a holding company to value and sell off the real estate assets.

Bankers say institutions in the running to advise Spain include those with experience of setting up Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) – a model which Spain could use - or in arranging Greece’s debt restructuring earlier this year.

Lazard, Blackstone and BNP Paribas advised on restructuring Greece’s debt. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America were among the main advisers to Ireland.

Credit Suisse, UBS, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Rothschild , Nomura and Deutsche Bank have also participated in government work through the financial crisis, according to Thomson Reuters data.

“They are debating ideas and being encouraged by the International Monetary Fund to do so,” said Pierre-Yves Bonnet, global head of financial institutions group at Societe Generale.

“But it is a very political decision as it means that they underestimated the necessary writeoffs in the first place.”

PARIS/LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) – As KPN weighs whether to sell its Belgian subsidiary, in the background lies a deeper question: Whether the Dutch telecom operator and others in the industry will retrench further to focus on defending their home markets.

Sources familiar with the company’s plans say KPN is mulling a sell of BASE, Belgium’s smallest operator, and wants 1.8 billion euros ($2.4 billion) for it.

They believe E-Plus, the third German player, which analysts value at a much heftier 6 billion euros and is the subject of perennial takeover speculation, could be the next to go.

Both assets were bought a decade ago, just as many of Europe’s former state-owned monopolies, flush with ambition during the Internet bubble, planted flags far from home in debt-fuelled acquisition sprees.

Today KPN and its telecom peers are under pressure to reverse the decline in revenues and profits brought about by the competition-boosting regulatory measures and the rise of device makers like Google and Apple, whose messaging apps allow users to avoid charges for voice and text.

They also must invest heavily in networks to provide the extra capacity required to manage the smartphone and tablet revolution.

That need for funds is leading some, such as Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, Spain’s Telefonica, and France Telecom to question, whether they can still afford their foreign empires at a time when they no longer have a growth story to tell investors, and so need to cut debt and protect dividends.

LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) – Buyout firms are vying with Australian group Macquarie for Franco-Belgian bank Dexia’s $1 billion asset management arm, people familiar with the situation said on Thursday.

State-supported Dexia is carving up its operations following a massive loss in 2011.

Private equity groups Advent International, Bain, CVC , Permira and Warburg Pincus were among those which made offers for Dexia Asset Management, three people told Reuters.

Bidders are waiting to hear whether they have been taken into the second stage of the sale which, according to one person, could see the business fetch up to 750 million euros ($988 million).

The private equity groups and Australian bank and asset manager Macquarie declined to comment.

Dexia, which also declined to comment, has been disposing of non-core operations to shore up its capital position.

It recently agreed the sales of its half of RBC Dexia Investor Services to its partner Royal Bank of Canada and Banque International a Luxembourg to Qatari investment group Precision Capital.