A cheeky website about deals, dealmakers and anything else I find interesting. Edited by Ben Harrington. If you have a tip, want to discuss a story or have a subscription enquiry please feel free to email Betaville at [email protected]. Betaville can also be reached at Whats App, Signal or Telegram. Betaville's Twitter handle is @bharringtonw11 and you can message me via Twitter with stories.
Followers of my work might have noticed a piece in this weekend's The Sunday Times quoting Peter Hargreaves, the billionaire founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, with his views on where stock markets might go next given they are flirting with record highs. Below is the link in case you missed it:..
They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So, Betaville is feeling rather flattered after reading today's City insider column in the venerable Financial Times.
One item in the column, written by senior FT hack Patrick Jenkins, is rather similar to tale about Matthew Greenburgh first aired on Betaville a few days ago. Below are the links:..
Betaville noticed the venerable Financial Times is today taking a pop at charming Crispin Odey, which must be rather galling for the old buffer.
In fact, the FT piece about Crispin's flagship fund losing assets was a rather good scoop by Miles Johnson, one of the best young financial hacks on the circuit.
There is a to the piece below in case you missed the tale and have an FT sub:..
I see the front pages of most of today's business sections are carrying the story about how Sir Hector Sants, the former boss of the City regulator, will give evidence in private at the High Court during £600 million Lloyds shareholder lawsuit.
Betaville wonders whether this is connected to last week's observation about how certain parts of claimants' opening arguments have been redacted?.....
Well, that took a while - a year, in fact. Readers might recall that Betaville first raised the prospect of Mediclinic instructing bankers at Morgan Stanley to look at buying the remainder of Spire Healthcare that it didn't own around about this time last year (see below)...
Court moles have got back in touch with an intriguing twist on the £600 million shareholder action against Lloyds Banking Group, Sir Victor Blank and Eric Daniels over their disastrous acquisition of HBOS at the height of the financial crisis a decade ago.
If one looks at the claimants' opening arguments readers should see certain parts have been redacted.
Betaville wonders (rather unsubtly out loud) why...?..
Matthew Greenburgh. Remember him? Well, in case you don't, let Betaville remind you. He was a top financial institutions group banker at Merrill Lynch who advised on some the biggest takeover deals of the credit boom, including Royal Bank of Scotland's £67 billion takeover of ABN Amro...
Hat tip to Russell Lynch. Betaville stumbled across the hack's cracking scoop in today's Evening Standard business section about a Turkish tycoon's £220 million potential bid for Newcastle United Football Club on the way to, ironically, a leaving party for a hackette that's about to join the great newspaper.
Here is a link to Lynch's piece in the Evening Standard:..
I see the Commons' work and pensions committee has today posted on its website the letter it has written to The Pensions Regulator asking it to investigate the £350 million merger of Trinity Mirror and Northern and Shell Media, publisher of The Daily Express.
Here is the link to that letter - do click it on it if you want to see all the tough questions the committtee, chaired by senior MP Frank Field, has posed:..
That didn't take long. Just two years after acquiring PEI Media - publisher of one of the journals read by many of the City's bankers, lawyers and buy-out barons - Lloyds Development Capital is weighing a sale of the business...
"Posh" is a familiar name in the dealing rooms of the City of London but not just because traders are obsessed with David Beckham's wife, the former Spice Girl now called Victoria Beckham.
Posh is also a chap called Anthony Harmer, a former Winterfloods trader who worked at the firm for 17 years with the legendary market maker Spencer Crooks.
Anyway, it turns out Harmer has been snapped up by US trading giant INTL FCStone to set up its equities trading desk in London...
Here is a snippet about an upcoming deal that may be of interest to bankers, buy-out types and, especially, City laywers.
Bowmark Capital, a London-based private equity firm, has appointed bankers from DC Advisory to work on a sale of Law Business Research, which publishes journals, legal rankings and sets up events for a lawyers around the world...
Betaville hears there are some interesting negotiating tactics being used by brokers ahead of the implementation of MiFID II regulations in the New Year.
Most market participants are aware of the upcoming rule changes which will force equity research departments to charge investor clients directly for their "research". And this is causing all sorts of confusion but about how much research, in particular "equity research", is really worth to investors...
Clearly, Crispin Odey is having a rather tough time after repeatedly mis-timing his bearish calls and seeing his flagship Odey European Fund perform terribly over the last few years (see part 23).
Still, Crispin's grim performance hasn't stopped colleagues having fun...
[Disclaimer - the information on Betaville does not consitute any form of investment recommendation and is not intended to be relied upon by readers in making, or refraining from, any investment decisions].