Hershey is considering bidding for Cadbury, a proposal that would top the $16.7 billion hostile bid from Kraft, people briefed on the matter told DealBook on Friday.
Any Hershey offer would probably be at least $17 billion, these people said. The American chocolate giant is working with JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America Merrill Lynch to line up the necessary — and immense — financing for such a bid. Read More »
Defending himself against critics, Representative Ron Paul of Texas played down continuing concerns on Friday that his amendment to give Congress sweeping new oversight powers over the Federal Reserve would compromise the central bank’s political independence. He asserted that the Fed was not truly as independent as it would like the public to believe.
“There is already a tremendous amount of political pressure on the Fed,” Mr. Paul, a libertarian Republican, told DealBook. “The Federal Reserve Board chairmen have notoriously been sympathetic to the presidents who might be reappointing them and there has been evidence to show that.” Read More »
Morgan Stanley is handing over Crescent Real Estate Equities to Barclays Capital, winning forgiveness of a $2 billion loan that financed its acquisition of the real estate business in 2007.
Barclays Capital has formed a joint venture with Goff Capital to acquire Crescent, the two companies said Friday in a statement. Morgan Stanley has been in negotiations since last month with Barclays Capital over the loan, which originally was $3.3 billion, Bloomberg News reports. Read More »
It is no secret that Bank of America’s board is having a tough time finding just the right person to run the company after the chief executive, Kenneth D. Lewis, announced he was leaving his position at the end of the year.
But Richard X. Bove, the outspoken bank analyst from Rochedale Securities, says that the best person for the job is right under the directors’ noses: Ken Lewis. Read More »
Update | 2:24 p.m. The final act of what the Deal Professor has nicknamed the “Forever War” may have just been written.
CF Industries Holdings announced Friday that all three of its nominees had been elected to the board of Terra Industries, a rival fertilizer maker, potentially ending an 11-month takeover battle.
“We are pleased that Terra stockholders have voiced their support for CF Industries’ proposed acquisition of Terra by voting for all three of our director nominees,” Stephen Wilson, CF Industries’ chief executive, said in a statement. “It is time to move forward and put these two great companies together.” Read More »
Update | 2:39 p.m. The New York Times’s David Segal provides more details of the Ohio lawsuit.
Ohio’s attorney general sued Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings on Friday, asserting that they provided misleading credit ratings that led to hundreds of millions of losses for state funds.
The official, Richard Cordray, filed the lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on behalf of five Ohio funds that assert they lost more than $457 million because of “false and misleading ratings” of mortgage-backed securities by the ratings agencies. Read More »
European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle’s planned $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems, The Associated Press reported.
The European Commission said Oracle had asked for more time ”in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission’s concerns.” Read More »
It’s no surprise that Warren E. Buffett can command enviable terms when it comes to bank loans. That’s the case with the $8 billion he is borrowing to take over the rest of the railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $26 billion.
Burlington Northern disclosed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway was borrowing the $8 billion from JPMorgan Chase (as administrative agent) and Wells Fargo (as syndication agent), paying about 1 percent to 2 percent over the London interbank offered rate, a common base for interest payments known as Libor. Read More »
Procter & Gamble does not see acquisitions as a core part of its growth plan and has started to buy back shares again, the consumer products conglomerate’s chief financial officer said on Friday.
“There seems to be continuous speculation … about what P.&G. may buy or sell,” the executive, Jon Moeller, said during a morning presentation at a Morgan Stanley conference, according to Reuters. Read More »
Volkswagen said on Friday that its supervisory board had approved certain agreement contracts for the planned merger with the German sportscar builder Porsche, taking the companies one step closer to completing the deal.
The contracts set out the organizational, structural and legal details of the agreement first announced in May, and which is expected to be concluded in 2011, The Associated Press reported. Read More »
The Gartmore Group, which manages about ₤21.8 billion ($36 billion) in hedge and mutual funds, is preparing an initial public offering of at least ₤250 million next month to reduce debt, Bloomberg News reported.
The money manager plans to cut borrowings to about ₤150 million from ₤400 million, its chief executive officer, Jeffrey Meyer, told reporters on a conference call Friday. Read More »
Harbinger Capital Partners has once again trimmed its stake in The New York Times Company.
The hedge fund disclosed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it now owns 14.64 percent of the Times Company’s publicly traded stock, down from the 16.38 percent stake held as of September.
Prior to that filing, Harbinger, which holds two seats on the Times Company’s board, owned a 20 percent stake in the firm. Read More »
The Securities and Exchange Commission must tighten its process for deciding which investment advisers to inspect if it is to avoid colossal breakdowns like the one that allowed Bernard L. Madoff’s multibillion-dollar fraud to go undetected for 16 years, the agency’s inspector general said.
A report released on Thursday by the office of Inspector General David Kotz proposes new requirements that the S.E.C.’s inspections office examine databases and documents related to investment advisers. Read More »
Ferrero, the Italian chocolate maker, could be interested in Cadbury’s gum and candy division, a unit worth about 5 billion euros ($7.4 billion), in a possible joint takeover bid, Il Sole 24 Ore reported.
Ferrero, which is privately held, and Hershey are considering a joint offer for the British confectioner, which is the target of a hostile bid from Kraft Foods.
A Hershey-Ferrero takeover would have the goal of breaking up Cadbury, with Ferrero ending up with the gum and candy division, Il Sole said, citing unidentified sources. Read More »
Some of Goldman Sachs’s largest shareholders have asked the company to cut the size of its bonus pool and pass along more of its profits to investors, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
Although the shareholders were not pushing for a huge cut in the bonus pools, they feel that Goldman should better reward shareholders for the rebound this year, the newspaper said. Read More »
Kraft Foods' $16.7 billion hostile takeover bid for Cadbury, the British confectionery company, is an example of how shareholder democracy can go wrong. More>>
Full coverage of the insider trading case against Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund billionaire accused of masterminding a wide-ranging insider trading network, and others accused of helping in the schemes. More>>
DealBook's coverage of the trial of two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers, the first court battle over Wall Street executives' roles in the financial crisis. More>>
DealBook's full coverage of Bernard L. Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the largest securities fraud case in history. More»
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