Matthew Lynn, business commentator at Betaville's former employer The Sunday Telegraph, was at it again this weekend: making audacious predictions about potential megadeals this year...
It has been brought to Betaville's attention that Investment bankers are all over WPP chairman Roberto Quarta, angling for permanent mandate as the company's financial advisor.
And you can see why corporate financiers are aggresively targeting the marketing services group set up by Sir Martin Sorrell in 1985...
A couple of weeks ago the Financial Times claimed Barclays was plotting a merger with Standard Chartered. This week the Pink'un is reporting Societe Generale is seeking a tie-up with Italian rival Unicredit. Below is a link to today's splash story:
https://www.ft.com/content/b87ee262-6723-11e8-b6eb-4acfcfb08c11..
The venerable Financial Times landed a cracking scoop overnight about Barclays explorer a merger with Standard Chartered. I have pasted the link below:
https://www.ft.com/content/7b3c789a-5e0b-11e8-9334-2218e7146b04
It looks like a well-researched piece: there are three by-lines, including one from Patrick Jenkins, a very senior FT hack who has been covering banks for years...
It's been ten years since Sir Christopher Hohn (then just Chris Hohn) launched a viscious activist campaign against ABN Amro by calling for the dismissal of its chief executive and a sale of the business. That move ultimately led to takeover approaches from Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland. And we all know what happened next.....
If you have a spare couple of minutes over the weekend give Simon English's business comment column in yesterday's the Evening Standard a read.