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.
Is it Mike Ashley day, today?
The maverick entrepreneur appears to making on-the-record comments everywhere this morning about everything from Arcadia to Debenhams.
To be fair, it was Deidre Hipwell who dug out some great quotes from Ashley (probably yesterday) about Sir Philip Green's Arcadia that made a superlative splash in The Times business section. Below is the link:..
This time last year Argo Blockchain, London's first ever cryptocurrency stock, was preparing to list on the London Stock Exchange to raise £25 million.
The company, which hoped to mine for crypto currencies in China, rode the bitcoin mania wave by listing at 16p with the backing of some serious cornerstone investors and snotty PR advisers from Tancredi...
Dear readers, I hope you don't mind if little old Betaville blows his own trumpet rather loud this evening after not only one but two of this cheeky website's RARE Alerts were confirmed in the last 24 hours...
Private equity firms are said to be circling Inmarsat, the London-listed satellite company.
People claiming to be familiar with the matter said Apax and Warburg Pincus are rumoured to be working on a plan to take Inmarsat private.
However, it's not clear whether the private equity firms have submitted a formal offer to Inmarsat's board - although one person claiming to be familiar with the matter suggested there is speculation an approach may be imminent...
TomCo Energy, a London-listed shale exploration company, is said to be working on an equity fundraising.
People claiming to be familiar with the matter said TomCo is looking to raise around £500,000, possibly via a placing with equity investors.
It's thought the new stock could be priced at between 2.0p and 2.5p, said people claiming to be familiar with the matter...
Oh look - Betaville notes Solidium has just announced it has bought a 5.1pc/EUR 205 million shareholding in Nokian Tyres, the niche tyre maker that has featured on Betaville Intelligence over the last couple of months.
The Finnish soveriegn wealth fund paid EUR 29.3 a share for its stock. Below is a link to the press release:..
Tucked away in the top left hand corner of page 2 of today's The Times was a notice about how Alistair Osborne, chief business commentator, has been named financial journalist of the year at the annual City of London Wealth Management Awards. ..
Betaville reckons it is worthwhile reading the newspapers in the old fashioned way: by literally picking it up the newspaper and reading it myself from front to back.
Why? Well, you never know what type of juicy nuggets you might find tucked in away in diaries, stock market reports and nibs columns...
I was intrigued to read in yesterday's venerable Financial Times that the likes of News Corp, Fitch, Moody's and S&P Global are queing up to pay £1 billion of the owner of Mergermarket, one of Betaville's first employers. Below is a link to the FT piece:
https://www.ft.com/content/5a79d412-444d-11e9-a965-23d669740bfb..
If your into M&A crystal ball-gazing then Will Turvill's splash piece in the Mail on Sunday's business section is well worth a read...
Betaville is in a bad mood.
Readers might be wondering why. Well, after stumbling across a fun little scoopette over a sumptuous lunch this week Betaville got cracking with the proper journalistic protocol of calling the relevant parties this morning to provide the customary "opportunity to comment"...
Betaville has encountered plenty of bankers recently moaning about the lack dealmaking activity in the UK because of the "uncertainty" caused by the looming March 29 Brexit day.
But there was one deal where Brexit didn't even register as a risk factor: Saputo's £1 billion takeover of British cheesemaker Dairy Crest.
Why?..
Hat tip to political blog Guido Fawkes for landing the story about Russell Chambers emerging as a key funder to The Independent Group, the new centrist political party foreshadowed on Betaville. Below is a link to the piece on Guido Fawkes:
https://order-order.com/2019/03/05/tony-blairs-favourite-banker-fundraising-tig/..
I see Betaville's friends over at the Evening Standard's business section have followed up this NM Rothschild conflict of interest line and landed up a rather juicy scoop in the process.
Indeed, Russ Lynch dug out the fact that Rothschild banker Nigel Higgins, the soon-to-be chairman of scandal hit Barclays, was in fact working for John Lewis/Waitrose on an almost identical deal just a few months ago...
Impressive: the chaps at NM Rothschild have turned up as lead financial adviser to Marks & Spencer on its JV deal with Ocado.
So, the venerable merchant is now lead adviser to three of the largest food retailers in the UK - Asda/Wal-Mart, Wm Morrison and now Marks & Spencer (from memory previously Citigroup/Schroders led the charge for M&S)...
Betaville thought it only right that I follow up this week's piece with a snippet noting that it was, in fact, The Sunday Times Prufrock diarist Liam Kelly who first picked up on FTI Consulting's attempt to win an award for its "defence" of GKN, the FTSE 100-listed aerospace giant bought by Melrose.
So, many grovelling apologies for missing that Mr Kelly!
And below is a link to the young scamp's original Prufrock column:..
Spotted: Steve Mnuchin, the 77th and current United States Secretary of the Treasury.
Betaville had been loafing around Mayfair (a smart area of London that tends to attract bankers, hedgies and men in dark glasses) looking for jackanories when lo and behold Steve Mnuchin, the Donald Trump sidekick with the unpronounceable surname, appears out of nowhere...
Betaville chuckled at the titbit in Dom Walsh's business diary column in The Times today about how FTI Consulting entered the PRCA City and Financial Awards for “best M&A or communication in support of a transaction award” for its work defending GKN from last year’s £8 billion hostile takeover by Melrose Industries. Below is a link if you missed it:..
[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].