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.
Hacks at Reuters are giving the Credit Suisse UBS merger rumours a fresh airing.
Yesterday the newswire wrote a piece suggesting the combination of the two Swiss banks is being studied, again. Below is the link:
Bizarre goings on following little old Betaville's scoop about Advent International's potential £2 billion plus takeover bid of Ultra Electronics earlier today.
First Cobham, the defence company owned by Advent, confirms this website's UNCOOKED Alert, suggesting it's looking at a cash offer for Ultra Electronics or a reverse merger...
Jim "Armo" Armitage, business editor of the Evening Standard, was quick out of the traps to get a new line on the tussle between Richard Bernstein's Crystal Amber and Boaz Weinstein's Saba, a 25pc shareholder that is threantening to vote to discontinue the small cap activist vehicle...
You don't see this very often: a well-known activist fund being targeted by another activist for poor performance.
Well, that's just happened to old Richard "Bernie" Bernstein, the ex Schroders scribbler that set up Crystal Amber to invest in and shake up British small cap companies...
There is something curious going on in the London market with this recent string of private equity bids for London-listed companies.
Betaville noticed that Senior's shares are still hovering around the 150p level despite the collapse of talks with American private equity suitor Lone Star.
Prior to Lone Star's approach becoming public Senior's shares were trading around 100p. The stock got up to around 165p as Lone Star improved its indicative offer to 200p...
I see Tiziana Life Sciences, the London and US-listed biopharmaceutical group, today confirmed the snippet on Betaville earlier this week. Below is the link in case you missed it:..
After this morning's UNCOOKED Alert a charming chap from Bloomberg got in touch to apologise for the mistake in aggregating Betaville content accurately.
And I understand Bloomberg has corrected its story from yesterday, which is very gracious of the global financial media outlet.
So, no hard feelings then from Betaville's end.
Now let's get back to competing for scoops and stories!..
Dear Bloomberg,
If you are going to rip off little old Betaville's UNCOOKED Alerts with attribution it would be great if you could accurately reflect what this website has published...
Tiziana Life Sciences is making a return to these pixels as Betaville hears there could some fresh news announced in the next few days about the company's development of a therapeutic treatment to combat Covid-19 variants.
The talk is the company's nasal drug therapy may participate in another trial in Brazil with hopes that once that it is completed the treatment could prove to work against variants, such as the Delta variant...
Cboe Global Markets Inc, the US-listed options and stock exchange operator, is at the centre of bid talk.
People following the situation said a mystery bidder has been stalking Cboe, which owns the Chicago Board Options Exchange and BATs Global Markets, for several weeks.
However, the identity of the potential purchaser remains unclear, said people following the situation...
Commentators, journalists and analysts were out in force this morning adding their two pennies worth to the weekend's most exciting corporate news event, airing all sorts of (potentially wild) speculation about rival offerors for WM Morrison.
For excample, George MacDonald, executive editor of Retail Week, turned up on Dominic O'Connell's BBC Radio 4 slot this morning to talk up the chance of Amazon mounting a counter bid...
Hat tip to Mark, the "Kleinmanator", Kleinman, who has just landed a corking scoop about Clayton Dubilier & Rice approaching WM Morrison about a £5 billion buy-out. Below is a link to Kleinman's story:
Well that didn't take long - rivals hacks at Dealreporter claim private equity firms EQT and Stonepeak could revive their plan to buy Royal KPN, the Dutch telecoms giant.
According to the report (which cites "sources familiar with the situation"), "the consortium is still thought to be interested in the company and could revisit the opportunity" and "could explore another attempt at acquiring the business at the end of this year or in 2022"...
Jim "Armo" Armitage, the Evening Standard City editor, has dug out a top corporate scoop this morning.
The soon-to-be new The Sunday Times business editor is a proper grafter and today that hard work appears to have paid off with a tale about wealth manager True Potential appointing Credit Suisse to work on a SPAC merger deal. Below is a link to Jim's piece:..
Mark, "the Kleinmanator", Kleinman of Sky News has just popped up with a decent story about a Toscafund whinge.
The fund, run by Martin "the Rottweiler" Hughes, has gone on the record (which is quite rare) to complain about Ramsay Health Care's 240p a share bid for private hospital operator Spire Healthcare. Below are the quotes from Toscafund and a link to Mark's tale:..
Do you remember the take private of suit retailer Moss Bros just as last year's stock market collapse kicked off in earnest?
The owners of Crew Clothing offered just over £22 million for Moss Bros in mid March 2020 but then tried to wriggle out of the deal once stock markets around the world plunged over 30pc...
[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].