A cheeky website about deals, dealmakers and anything else I find interesting. Edited by Ben Harrington. If you have a tip or want to discuss a story please feel free to email Betaville at ben@betaville.co.uk. 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.
Betaville applauds the Evening Standard's excellent City Spy column yesterday sticking up for a young Finanical Times hack that just a couple of days ago was viciously attacked on Twitter by UBS for "agenda journalism"...
Betaville's chums on the Mail on Sunday's business section had a decent haul yesterday.
Indeed, Neil "Neily" Craven's scoop about Ray Kelvin looking at a take private of Ted Baker appears to be the most talked about story in the London market this morning...
Betaville takes a lot of stick from punters about my jackanories, so below is a link that effectively confirms this week's RARE Alert about Woodford Investment Management placing its near 17pc stake in wily old Richard Bernstein's Crystal Amber Fund...
Oh look: Inflexion Private Equity has just bought Estera, the firm linked to the 'Paradise Papers' leak, from Bridgepoint. See the press release below:
Betaville has been advised by a few men in dark glasses to "keep an eye on" Aim-listed BigDish, the online restaurant bookings platform.
Why? Well, to be clear the upcoming story has nothing to do with M&A, deals or takeovers.
According to Betaville's moles, there are some rather "interesting characters" that are on the verge of joining the company.
Watching.....
Last week it was Morses Club; this week Woodford Investment Management is selling out of Crystal Amber Fund, the activist investor run by wily old Richard Bernstein.
According to people claiming to be familiar with the matter, Neil Woodford's firm just dumped some or all of its 17pc stake in Crystal Amber Fund at around 190p.
That doesn't sound too good given the shares were trading at 223p in May, closed this evening at 196p and have a Net Asset Value of 249p...
It's happened again: Betaville publises a piece behind the paywall and before you know it the article is mis-represented/aggregated by the wires and twisted into something completely false by random (or maybe not?) punters on Twitter.
In case you are wondering what I am complaining about I am referring to yesterday's RARE ALERT about Plus500. Below is the link, which I have now made publicly available so people can see what I REALLY published...
Plus500 is rumoured to be eyeing a tie-up with US rival GAIN Capital but people familiar with the situation tried to pour cold water on the prospect of an imminent deal.
Industry sources claiming to be familiar with the matter said they had heard speculation the London-listed company is weighing a bid for GAIN Capital although it wasn't clear whether Plus500 has made a formal approach for the company...
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, appreared to definitively rule out any potential re-nationalisation of BT Group in yesterday's The Sunday Times following reports from Yahoo Finance a couple of weeks ago that Labour was looking at the possibility of taking the telecoms giant back into public ownership.
Below is the link to Oliver Shah and John Collingridge's fascinating piece in yesterday's business sections:..
Oh look - Morses Club has effectively confirmed this week's tale about Woodford offloading his shareholding in the lender. I have pasted a link below:
https://www.investegate.co.uk/morses-club-plc--mcl-/rns/holding-s--in-company/201907111559172885F/..
No wonder credit default swaps on Thomas Cook's bonds (effectively the cost of bond insurance) were blowing out earlier this week.
Overnight, the details of some funky debt-for-equity swap deal emerged via the Kleimmanator of Sky News (to be fair, it was a good scoop) with Fosun, the Chinese conglomerate that is already Thomas Cook's largest shareholders. Below is the link:..
Two Shields stuck out an interesting annoucement regarding its investment in WeShop just a few days after Betaville stumbled across the penny share. Below is the link:
Another day, another Woodford exit from the stock market.
People claiming to be familiar with the matter have told Betaville Neil Woodford is close to dumping his 10pc stake in Morses Club, another one of the fund manager's lender investments, at around 130p a share.
Woodford Investment Management also owns big shareholdings in Provident Financial and Non-Standard Finance, which earlier this year were involved in a hostile takeover...
It has been brought to my attention that the Spanish financial website Intereconomia is reporting that Proctor & Gamble has hired Goldman Sachs to launch a takeover bid for Ontex, the Belgian diaper maker, and linking this bid story to Betaville.
This is a complete misrepresentation of what I wrote several weeks ago in an UNCOOKED ALERT...
Thomas Cook's debt is coming back into focus as a few punters have noticed credit default swaps for some of the company's bonds are blowing out a tad.
According to Bloomberg data, the CDS - the cost of insurance for a bond - for one Thomas Cook note has leapt by 12000 basis points or around 120pc while the security flirts with an all time low of 34 cents (its denominated in EUROS)...
Dom Walsh of The Times has also picked up on Marston's potential sale of Pitcher & Piano. Below is a link to his piece:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pitcher-piano-sale-plan-hits-right-note-for-marstons-8wt7f7s3w..
[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].