Stocks are running out of time
RUNNING out of time? Walgreens and Rite Aid will likely keep their merger agreement if the tie-up doesn’t land regulatory approval by last week’s deadline. At a meeting with investors, CEO Stefano Pessina said the companies were discussing “all instruments and actions” they could put in place to win approval from the FTC. The $9.4 bn deal would result in a drugstore chain with more than 10,000 US stores.
Shaking the UK retail industry, Tesco has agreed to buy the country’s largest food wholesaler Booker for £3.7 bn, claiming it will realize cost synergies of at least £175m. Britain’s largest supermarket also said it plans to restart paying dividends in fiscal 2018, reflecting the company’s improved performance. It last paid a dividend in December 2014.
Facing cost overruns at its US nuclear division, Toshiba has approved plans to spin off its memory chip unit at the end of March and sell a stake in the new business. Toshiba estimates the value of the unit at ¥1tn to ¥1.5tn ($9-13 bn), according to Reuters, and plans to announce a huge nuclear writedown on February 14, when it reports quarterly results.
Lawyers for Martin Shkreli and his codefendant Evan Greebel have confirmed the duo wants separate juries. If Judge Kiyo Matsumoto agrees, the “pharma bro” would be tried first starting June 26, while Greebel’s trial would begin in October. Shkreli is accused of looting the pharmaceuticals firm he previously headed, Retrophin, to pay off hedge fund investors whom he allegedly had defrauded.
Sears tumbled more than 9 per cent to under $8 per share on Thursday, sending the company’s stock to its lowest price since its merger with Kmart back in 2004. The decline piled on to a 7 per cent drop in Sears’ shares a day earlier, when Fitch Ratings called attention to the chain’s “significant” cash burn. The company also ended up at the top of a Bloomberg Intelligence list of retailers with the highest risk of bankruptcy.
Two years after raising minimum wages for store employees to $9 per hour, Wal-Mart is making adjustments to the way it hands out pay increases and trains store staff. The retailer will abbreviate a programme that new employees must complete to earn $10 per hour and will implement pay hikes based on hiring anniversary dates. The average salary at Wal-Mart is now $13.69 per hour.
Peabody Energy has received US bankruptcy court approval for its disclosure statement, as well as plan support, private placement and backstop commitment agreements. The court approval will allow Peabody to begin soliciting votes for its plan of reorganisation ahead of a March 3 voting deadline and a March 16 hearing to consider confirmation of the plan.
Now that it has completed its acquisition of Starz, Lionsgate has kicked off the process to sell its 31.2 per cent stake in Epix to the joint venture’s other partners, MGM and Paramount. Any deal would likely value Epix, which comes with an online streaming service, somewhere between $1B-$2B, sources said. Epix, whose shows include Berlin Station and Graves, has about 14m subscribers.
Facebook is giving users a new way to keep their social network accounts secure. It’s introducing a new form of two-factor authentication that relies on hardware dongles — a physical key — in addition to passwords. Facebook will use two types — USB keys that can slide into a laptop with touch activation, and NFC keys that can communicate with wireless chips built into Android devices. [Seeking Alpha]