Should Société Générale be acquired? Naturally, the answer to this will still require some answers from SocGen itself together with the French regulators, but in any other country than France, the answer would be a resounding ‘yes.’ Look no further than Bankers Trust in the US who had several lawsuits and a declining franchise due [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Even John Thain’s magic is taking time to work at Merrill Lynch, although we really do need to give him a bit more time than he’s had to have a real impact. Nevertheless, he’s been busy breaking up Merrill Lynch, with the sale of its capital finance business to General Electric just before Christmas (see [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Everyone’s been jumping onto the bandwagen of reporting the deal volumes for 2007, even before the year’s done (granted that not many more deals will be announced before 31 December). I recommend reporting from FT Alphaville, The New York Times Dealbook, and The Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal. Note that all of these reports were [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )I can’t help but comment on this story that made news earlier this week (see FT Alphaville and the Financial Times), because of the company’s name and my surname being identical — and it’s not that common a name.
(Full disclosure: I am not aware of any family connections between me, my ancestors or the German company recently [...]
There’s been a lot of talk in the past few weeks about whether the so-called ‘credit crisis’ has weakened a number of investment banks so much that they are now likely targets. Just look at Top Firms said to be Takeover Targets, for example from Here is the City. That entry ponders the independent future [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )We love to see the application of new intelligence techniques in assessing mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Check this out…
A most interesting comment was posted on this blog on 19 November in response to our own thoughts regarding the possible break-up of Merrill Lynch, Citibank and Northern Rock (see More about breaking up Merrill Lynch, Citi and Northern [...]
There’s been a major market shift. Of course there’s still new deals being announced, as the current merger wave is most definitely NOT over. Note the record-breaking BHP Billiton £67 billion bid on 8 November 2007 for Rio Tinto (see FT Alphaville’s announcement of this deal), a deal that is likely to be front-page news for a while [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Let’s take a page from the RBS / Santander / Fortis songbook: why does an acquisition of Merrill Lynch need to be done by just one financial buyer. Look at the assets. There’s enough carrion in Merrill Lynch to feed a flock of banking vultures. Add in the restructuring funds and think about the possibilities. They all [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )We’re doing some research on how individuals survive when their company is acquired.
Obviously, luck plays a large role. Serendipity intervenes. But the fact remains that there are people who get fired and others who remain. Is there anything that people can do to be in the survivor category?
We are looking for personal stories about what [...]
The New York Times Dealbook on M&A referenced an article from Reuters about Microsoft. They reported that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said on 18 October that they would focus on up to 20 smaller acquisitions of $50 million to $1 billion each annually rather than mega-deals, despite rumours that Microsoft has been looking at Yahoo and Facebook [...]
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