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.
Readers might recall that earlier this week HSBC was quick out of the blocks to boast how it was the "sole" financial advisor to ChemChina on its $43 billion purchase of Sygenta, sending out a release on topic in the early hours of Wednesday morning...
Reuters has picked up on another one of my Tip TV stories.
Yesterday, the news agency "broke" the story that Swiss pharma giant Roche had approached Pacific Biosciences about a takeover deal. Here is the link:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pacbio-ma-roche-idUSL2N15H2F7..
Ping! An email arrives from HSBC with the headline:
HSBC sole financial advisor to ChemChina on Syngenta acquisition
That's before I had even received the formal $43 billion deal announcement from Syngenta or ChemChina...
There is a good story in the Financial Times this evening about British Airways and London City Airport...
I see J Sainsbury and Home Retail Group have effectively agreed a deal that will see the latter taken out for 161p a share by the FTSE 100 company. Here is the link:..
Zak was in the chair today, probing me about Betaville and M&A.
Here is a link to today's clip:
http://www.tiptv.co.uk/finance/ma-roundup-argos-sainsburys-deal-on-a-knife-edge/..
There is plenty to reflect on in the British business press this weekend...
I would have done this post earlier but I have been sidetracked by, well, general larking about, including a jolly nice lunch with an old contact at Richard Caring's The Ivy, where I spotted Tory party supremo Lord Feldman chowing down...
It's good to see little old Betaville's RARE story about Reckitt Benckiser followed up in the British stock market reports this morning...
Should I be surprised how these random Twitter rumours get out of control? Probably not...
It still never ceases to amaze me how quickly stocks fall in and out of fashion with investors, traders and market participants.
Indeed, the healthcare/ biotech sector has taken another serious pasting today following worse-than-expected figures from Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant. So, AstraZeneca is down 3pc today while Shire has fallen almost 5pc.
However, there is one stock that has quiet literally reversed a rout of its share price: MySQUAR...
Here's an interesting Tweet from Open Outcrier:..
If there is one thing that really irritates me it's being beaten to the punch by rival hacks on a story I had spent several days trying to stand up.
Yes, that does occasionally happen to me.
And yesterday was particularly galling as I was just about publish a piece about how the Novum takeover had run into difficulties when hacks and hackettes at the Financial Times released their version of the jackanory. Here is a link to their piece:..
I see Royal Dutch Shell's £35 billion purchase of BG Group has been approved by over 80pc of the Anglo Dutch company's shareholders.
So I guess the Telegraph's recent scaremongering about the deal collapsing, led by Jupiter fund manager Ian McVeigh, was just, err, scaremongering......
There is an interesting piece in the The Times this morning about J Sainsbury's submitting a revised offer for Home Retail Group (I would paste the link but it doesn't seem to work).
The piece, written by my old boss Richard Fletcher, sort of echoes some of the things I talked about on Tip TV earlier in the week...
I have been wondering what happened to the Ed's Easy Diner sale process since I wrote my last piece about a potential deal "moving closer to completion". Here is a link to that article in case you haven't seen it:
http://betaville123.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/dubenss-firm-oakley-hungry-for-eds-easy.html..
Stockmarkets around the world are taking another hammering this week, with the FTSE 100 down 1pc this morning after a major sell off in China.
So, I'm wondering whether the "top of the market" series I started on little old Betaville last summer highlighting several clear "top-of-the-market" indicators was a rather prescient warning for investors?
Or, perhaps this is just a "correction" ahead of another leg up post a few interest rate rises in US?..
It's a Monday, so here is a link to today's Tip TV clip.
http://www.tiptv.co.uk/finance/m-sainsburys-bid-for-home-retail/..
There were plenty of interesting stories in the Sunday newspaper business sections this weekend.
One tale, though, that caught my eye was the business splash of The Sunday Times.
Oliver Shah and Peter Evans, biz hacks over at The Sunday Times, discovered that giant US hedge fund Och-Ziff has been secretly building a stake in GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's biggest pharma company, and is now putting pressure on the FTSE 100 company's board...
I'm not in the habit of giving Bloomberg much praise as the journalists that work there are pretty good at praising themselves...
[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].