American financial media outfits Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal were clearly onto something when they began to report yesterday that lender Capital One was in talks to buy credit card firm Discover Financial.
Overnight the deal was announced, with Warren Buffett-backed Capital One agreeing to buy Discover Financial for just over $35 billion in stock. Below is a link to the press release:..
I see Alex Brummer, veteran City hack and business commentator at the Daily Mail, is also jumping onto the BP could be vulnerable to a bid thesis.
And Brummer adds a line into his column about how leaderless BP might now be of interest to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway vehicle. Below is a link to Brummer's column:..
Remember when Warren Buffett and Brazilian private equity firm 3G tried to buy Unilever for £115 billion?
That was back in 2017 when Bryce Elder, an intrepid stock market reporter from the Financial Times, broke the blockbuster scoop...
Warren Buffett is splashing out over $11 billion on US-listed property and casualty insurer Alleghany Corporation.
Buffett's firm Berkshire Hathaway is paying $848.02 per in cash for Alleghany and follows a period in which the billionaire old timer has complained about the lack of acquisition opportunities.
Anyway, I have pasted the core details of the press release below:..
Well, it looks like Ian "Kingy" King is first out of the traps to highlight something little old Betaville had been ruminating on with an old City contact over a few glasses down the pub this evening.
In a piece today King, a former City editor of The Times and now business presenter at Sky News, argues Unilever may have accidently put itself in play after attempting to buy GlaxoSmithKline's consumer division for £50 billion. Below is the link:..
It's tough to get excited about bid tales in this awful bear market. But today there was a line tucked away in the Alex Brummer's column in the business section of the Daily Mail that might give bulls something to chew over...
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been sniffing around Independent Oil & Gas's debt.
People familiar with the situation said Ineos, Sir Jim's chemicals company, bid on Independent Oil and Gas's bonds before the North Sea oil explorer decided to repay some of the non-convertible debt held by failed outfit London Oil and Gas, which is associated with controversial City firm London Capital & Finance...
Betaville has been inundated with phone calls since the venerable Financial Times ran its interview with the Sage of Omaha, in which the octogenarian billionaire investor suggested he is looking at doing a big UK deal. Below is a link to the interview:
https://www.ft.com/content/32676c5c-667e-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a056
"What's he going to buy,?" asked one veteran investor...
I see the New York Post is today carrying a story about how consumer goods giant Colgate-Palmolive could be looking to sell the business. Here is the link:
http://nypost.com/2017/05/16/colgate-palmolive-could-be-looking-to-sell/..
Two days on and the upper echelons of the financial media world are still picking over the carcass of the failed Kraft Heinz / 3G / Warren Buffett / Unilever deal.
Probably the best newspaper piece out there is the "tick tock" by Arash Massoudi and James Fontanella-Kahn in today's Financial Times. Here is the link in case you haven't read it:..