Vasanta secures a crucial cash injection from Endless July 21, 2009 OFFICE supply giant Vasanta has announced it has secured lifeline funding from turnaround group Endless Investments, in return for handing a 79 per cent stake to the private equity house. The group has avoided collapse through a £30m cash injection from an Endless-led syndicate. The deal will also see 29 per cent of the firm’s [...]
Credit spreads at pre-Lehman levels as US sentiment boosted by CIT rescue July 21, 2009 EUROPEAN credit derivatives continued their revival yesterday, with spreads on the Markit iTraxx index reaching levels last seen prior to the collapse last year of Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers. The series 11 Markit iTraxx Europe index, tracking the cost of insuring against default on 125 investment-grade borrowers, reached 101/102 basis points yesterday afternoon, [...]
Friends slams Cowdery’s bid after meeting July 20, 2009 INSURER Friends Provident yesterday lashed out at Resolution, the buyout vehicle led by Clive Cowdery, saying its efforts to take over the firm are “totally inappropriate”. The statement came after Friends’ chairman Sir Adrian Montague came face-to-face with Cowdery for the first time since the takeover plans were launched, at a meeting at the offices [...]
Savvy traders look to profit from surge in takeover deals July 20, 2009 FOLLOWING a dearth of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity during the depths of the financial crisis, upbeat figures released last Friday by Thomson Reuters showed that UK target M&A is up 39 per cent year-to-date compared to the same period last year. There has been a recent pick-up in global M&A activity with London dominating [...]
UK dominates deal rankings July 19, 2009 LONDON dominated the global mergers & acquisitions (M&A) scene last week, with deals by buyout vehicle Resolution and gas giant Centrica pushing up UK volumes by 39 per cent compared to last year. Resolution’s talk of a $2.7bn (£1.65bn) buyout of insurer Friends Provident was the top announced deal and Centrica’s $1.7bn plans to take [...]
Why Goldman Sachs is doing so well July 14, 2009 SO Meredith Whitney was right. The high-profile Wall Street analyst upgraded her advice to potential Goldman Sachs investors from “neutral” to a “buy” – and the investment bank, whose European operations are based in Fleet Street, responded with a hugely positive set of numbers. Net profit for the three months to June hit $3.4bn from [...]
Cowdery will chase Friends July 13, 2009 CLIVE Cowdery’s buyout vehicle, Resolution, is prepared to launch a hostile bid for Friends Provident, the life assurance firm led by Trevor Matthews, if it fails to agree a takeover. Cowdery and Matthews may end up battling it out if a friendly deal can’t be struck, with Resolution prepared to ignore the Friends board’s recommendations [...]
Vasanta says it is nearing vital deal July 12, 2009 OFFICE supply giant Vasanta has spoken out again to reassure backers over its financial situation, stating it has entered the last stages of talks with its unnamed private equity saviour. Group chief executive Richard Martin yesterday said the private equity investor, who is backed by the firm’s lending banks, has been granted a “short period [...]
Bond insurers obliged to pay out over Bradford & Bingley July 9, 2009 COMPANIES that provide insurance against bond defaults will have to pay out to cover the recent non-payments by nationalised building society Bradford & Bingley (B&B), following a key ruling yesterday. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) ruled that B&B’s failure to keep up with payments on £325m of Tier 2 bonds constituted a “credit [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 9, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMESSTRATEGIC REVAMP FOR LLOYD’SLloyd’s of London has begun the biggest strategic review it has undertaken this decade in an attempt to ensure the more than 320-year-old insurance market does not fail in exploiting the gaps in the market thrown up by the financial crisis. The institution, which deals in insurance risks from all over the [...]