It’s quite easy to do bad deals in asset management. Option one, overpay for a private capital business in the aggressive dash for growth. Option two, defensively merge your existing fund manager with a regional peer and botch the integration as you try to make savings.
KKR & Co. is eyeing one of the riskiest deals going right now — buying the owner of London’s creaking water and sewage system, Thames Water. Giving a private equity firm the chance to profit from fixing the mess Thames got into under past private ownership looks bad but makes sense.
It’s not often you see big tech firms getting pushed around. Upstart Wiz Inc. has just squeezed Google owner Alphabet Inc. to pony up $32 billion for a privately owned five-year-old cybersecurity firm.
The deal just announced for Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. is above all a massive transaction.
The trend is your friend. Or, in Larry Fink’s case, your primary acquisition tickbox.
“Think of what we could do together” is a touching line at the denouement of Wicked: Part 1, the movie currently raking it in at the box office for Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures.
Rupert Murdoch has so far made it easy for Rightmove Plc to resist his takeover bid.
There’s opportunism — and there’s Qualcomm Inc.’s approach to buy Intel Corp. The acquisitive semiconductor giant has an opening to attempt such a momentous deal thanks to the yawning gap between their market capitalizations. The snag is that many obstacles remain to a successful transaction.
When markets gyrated at the turn of the month, US and Japanese stocks had the cushion of an earlier surge to fall back on. In Europe, the rout hit share prices that had been weakening since May. An earnings season dominated by pessimism from many of the region’s bosses has vindicated investors’ caution.
Pressure is again mounting on the proxy advisory firms that recommend how investors should vote on executive pay and other corporate matters. Regulators need to remember who should be prioritized here — investors, not company management.
How alternative can you get? Historically, conventional fund managers have dealt with the threat from private equity and hedge funds by creating or buying alternative investment funds of their own.
Everyone says that mergers and acquisitions mostly fail. Now Bain & Co. brings a challenge to the received wisdom.
Foreign acquirers — mainly from the US — are targeting UK companies again. This time they’re being forced to pay up. Forget the apparent cheap valuations of London stocks when a handful of shares are traded. Buying an entire UK company means burning a hole in your pocket.
Capital One Financial Corp.’s $35 billion deal for rival credit card provider Discover Financial Services is more than an opportunistic move on a rival that had a lamentable 2023. The takeover reinforces the impression that corporate leaders are willing to take risks on big M&A again.
The private equity industry has rediscovered its mojo. The latest updates from the publicly traded firms specializing in the asset class satisfied investors’ appetite for bullish vibes from the leadership teams. As shares in alternative investment managers build on an already strong recovery, the risks of disappointment can only mount.
It’s a seller’s market for infrastructure asset managers. Conventional and alternative investment firms are falling over themselves to expand in this lucrative area, and M&A is the easiest way for them to leapfrog the competition.
It sounded quixotic, and so it proved. Activist investor Jeff Ubben is winding down his social and environmental impact funds, a project that sought to harness capitalism for the simultaneous benefit of society and shareholders.
When private equity firms push into an industry, you know there are decent returns to be made. Just consider their enthusiasm for the arcane business of insuring corporate pensions.
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” F. Scott Fitzgerald could have added that they are also generationally different from each other.
The private equity industry’s push into credit is so well advanced that no one bats an eyelid when the same buyout firm is invested in the debt and equity of the same portfolio company.
Is a hedge fund anything without its founder? Another batch of well-known hedge fund managers have sold out or moved to liquidate portfolios this month. Their legacies as entrepreneurs underscore the challenges of building a firm that outgrows the key risk-taker.
A charismatic entrepreneur pulls in wealthy investors to amass a portfolio of some of the finest prime real estate. Banks and bondholders are persuaded to provide the leverage. What could possibly go wrong?
Helping an investor cash out of a gummed-up buyout fund used to be a niche business. Now it’s mainstream. So-called secondary funds, which offer to buy unwanted private equity holdings, have become widely accepted.
Calling your business a burning platform is, in most cases, a stupid thing to do. The idea is to scare staff into performing better and prepare an underperforming organization for painful layoffs. But it can just make things worse.
Spare a thought for the other AT1 crowd — not investors in Additional Tier 1 securities extinguished in Credit Suisse Group AG’s rescue, but shareholders in Aroundtown SA, the Frankfurt-listed property firm with the same stock-market ticker.
This should be the time when forward-thinking bosses can launch a takeover without having to fight a counterbid from a private equity firm, and hopefully end up paying a sensible price.
It’s a deal which until recently was hard to imagine. Buying Albertsons Cos. triggers major antitrust risks for any of its obvious industry suitors.
Poor-performing chief executives can sleep a little easier. Bill Ackman, one of the world’s best-known investors, has all but ruled out future activist campaigns in favor of a lower-key approach to influencing portfolio companies. That’s a commendable investment stance. But efficient capital markets still need the odd rabble rouser.
