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.
One of London's top hedge fund managers has just tipped Kahoot! as a top investment idea.
According Bloomberg hack Nishant Kumar, Abhishek Agrawal of Polygon pitched Kahoot!, the Norwegian games based learning platform, at the Sohn investment conference, where the world's top hedgies come together to talk about some of their best ideas.
Talk about after the horse has bolted!..
Betaville is in a bit of a grump.
That's because arch rivals at Bloomberg have just run a tale about private equity firm General Atlantic weighing a takeover bid for Kahoot, the Norwegian social learning platform.
Little old Betaville was chasing down exactly the same tale but the financial media behemoth pipped me to the post this time round. Below is the link to the Bloomie piece:..
Tucked away at the back of The Times stockmarket report is a little snippet suggesting London-listed defence company QinetiQ may be a takeover target.
Dominic Walsh, a veteran business hack on The Times, wrote the report, which suggests the QinetiQ shares moved higher yesterday on speculation of bid interest from "private equity and trade buyers"...
Sometimes little old Betaville's alerts are confirmed immediately and somtimes it takes a few weeks for the confirmation to come through.
But with the case of Indivior's interest in buying US-listed Opiant Pharmaceuticals it took a few months!
If you don't remember, Betaville published a series of detailed UNCOOKED Alerts on the deal. Below are the links:..
Pantheon Resources, the Aim-listed oil and gas explorer, has become the latest target for some of the stockmarket's most fercious bears.
According to Jamie "Nimmers" Nimmo of The Sunday Times, Muddy Waters has taken a short position in Pantheon Resources.
Muddy Waters is run by Carson Block, one of the most respected and feared short sellers. His previous European targets include NMC Health (the former FTSE-listed health care company)...
Last week hacks at the Wall Street Journal were boasting about a scoop - that Kering (the owner of Gucci) was in "advanced talks" to buy menswear brand Tom Ford for around $3 billion. Below is the link:
Perhaps there isn't a deal for Sam Bankman-Fried's crytpo exchange FTX after all!
Binance, a rival crypto exchange led by Changpeng Zhao, has now backed out and it's not looking good for Bankman-Fried, FTX and their clients. Below is a link to the latest on that sorry affair:
https://www.ft.com/content/593cad86-683c-4444-ac7b-c5c875fb4d95..
Temenos's activist investor is banging the drum again, this time calling for the chief executive and chairman to leave and and a formal "strategic review".
According to Bloomberg, Petrus Advisers has written another letter to the Switzerland-based banking software company arguing Max Chuard, the company's chief executive should be fired and Andreas Andreades, the chairman, needs to resign...
What next for FTX.com's 7.6pc shareholding in Robinhood?
That's the question many market watchers are asking this morning after yesterday's massive news event about Binance bailing out Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto currency exchange FTX.com amid a liquidity crunch...
There is quite a bit of deal news percolating the market today but unfortunately the transactions are the more traditional types of deals you find in a bear market.
According to Bloomberg's newest recruit - Sabah Meddings, formerly of The Sunday Times business section - FTSE 100-listed retailer Next is in "pole position" to snap up Made.com, the ailing online furniture retailer that floated on the London market last year...
Hat tip to hacks at The Athletic for digging out the scoop about Fenway Sports Group putting Liverpool Football Club on the market.
According to The Athletic, Fenway have got Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley working on the sale and an on the record comment from Liverpool's owners saying they "open to offers".
Now, there have been plenty of suitots for Liverpool FC in the past, including from the Chinese in various shapes and guises...
Apologies for the tardy post Betavillers; unfortunately I was away from the desk all day travelling from one end of London to the other during an on-off rail strike.
Anyway, it would appear Mark "The Kleinmanator" Kleinman, a former colleague at The Daily Telegraph, of Sky News landed today's top deal scoop...
Russell "Russ" Hotten, veteran business hack, was kind enough to give little old Betaville a mention on the front page of The Times business section following National World's confirmation of its interest in bidding for Reach, publisher of The Daily Mirror.
Below is the link to the The Times piece and the official confirmation of yesterday's UNCOOKED Alert:..
So, Betaville's old chum, Graham Ruddick, has lasted six months with his new newsletter Off to Lunch.
Graham "Ruddy" Ruddick was formerly deputy business editor on The Times and previously worked on the City desk at The Daily Telegraph with little old Betaville.
Now he has his own start up newsletter on Substack, a technology platform that allows writers and hacks to set up their own publications...
Johnson & Johnson is splashing out $16.6 billion for Abiomed Inc, a medical technology company.
The American healtchare giant is making an upfront payment of $380 in cash and is also offering $35.00 per share in cash if certain commercial and clinical milestones are achieved.
That's a premium of over 50pc for Abiomed Inc!
Below is a link the press release:..
Tucked away in the middle of today's The Times business section is a rather intriguing piece by Rob Lea of The Times that suggests FTSE 250-listed buget airline easyJet may soon become a bid target.
The piece starts off with the suggestion that IAG, owner of British Airways and Iberia, is keen on carrying out further consolidation of the European airline sector and that TAP, the Portuguese flag carrier, could be its next target...
Blackstone is set to carry out the biggest private equity buy out in months.
According to hacks at the Wall Street Journal, Blackstone has struck a deal to purchase 55pc of Emerson Electric's division that sells compressors used for commercial and residential heating...
So, no final curve ball from Elon Musk as his $44 billion takeover of Twitter finally closes.
Some long term investors will breathe a sigh of relief after Twitter shares plunged to as low as $14 over the last few years.
But several hedge funds, such as Evan Tindell's Bireme Capital, will be cracking open the expensive champagne after making a fortune on the deal trade...
[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].