The French stockmarket seems to be the exciting place to be at the moment.
Now, regular readers will have seen what has happened to Solutions 30, the Paris-listed Luxembourg based outsourcer, this morning but there is another tale captivating continental investors...
You don't see this very often in the world of mergers and acquisitions: somebody from a trade union outing a deal ON THE RECORD to the press.
Well, that just happened over the Channel in France after Agence France Presse quoted Sebastian Crozier, president of the CFE-CGC Orange organisation as saying "the Atos buyout proposal will be supported by the employee directors and employee shareholders at the next Orange Board of Directors on December 2"...
Oh look - French IT services company Atos has finally confirmed its making a (hostile?) bid for Gemalto, effecitvely confirming Betaville's original scoop from April this year. I have pasted the link below:
And another one has been unveiled this morning. This time it's FTSE 250-listed Paysafe that's on the receiving end of a £2.8 billion/590p a share takeover approach from Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners. Here is the link:..
Dutch digital security company Gemalto is being circled by a mystery buyer.
People claiming to be familiar with the matter said Gemalto is rumoured to have received a non-binding proposal conditional on due diligence although it's not clear what price the buyer is willing to pay for business.
Some people suggested the approach for Gemalto had come from French IT services group Atos...