UK postal service to sells shares to public next month
KKR to buy Panasonic ops Norwegian joblessness up Power Assets seeks US$5bil Spanish inflation down Monaco peddles luxury submarines
Royal Mail Group Ltd, the 360-year-old UK postal service, will be valued at as much as £3.3bil when it sells shares to the public next month, the government said.
Shares in Royal Mail, which would begin trading on Oct 11, would be priced at 260 pence to 330 pence a share, the UK government said in a statement.
Between 401 million shares and 522 million shares would be sold, or 40.1% to 52.2% of its capital, it said.
The postal service’s sale would be the biggest UK privatisation since former Prime Minister John Major broke up British Rail in the 1990s.
Royal Mail, one of the country’s largest employers, has shifted away from letters to more lucrative package shipping amid competition from TNT Express NV of the Netherlands and Deutsche Post AG’s DHL Express.
“This will give Royal Mail access to the private capital it needs to modernise,” Business Secretary Vince Cable said in the statement.
KKR & Co has agreed to buy Panasonic Corp’s healthcare unit for about 165 billion yen (US$1.67bil).
A wholly-owned subsidiary of the US private-equity firm will purchase all shares and assets of Panasonic Healthcare Co, according to a statement from the companies.
KKR then will allocate 20% of the wholly-owned unit to Panasonic. The Osaka-based Japanese electronics maker expects the transaction to add 75 billion yen in profit and said it was studying the effects of the sale on its annual forecast.
“We believe that partnering with KKR will also allow us to learn from KKR’s global operational and business management expertise as we pursue the next stage in growth,” Panasonic president Kazuhiro Tsuga said in the statement. — Bloomberg “We are encouraged by the interest shown by potential investors so far.”
The government will raise about £2bil through the offer, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Royal Mail has a 53% market share in the UK parcel delivery business
Norwegian seasonally adjusted unemployment climbed to the highest since early 2011 as an expansion slows in Scandinavia’s richest economy.
The adjusted number of people without work climbed to 72,141, the highest since February 2011, the Oslo-based Norwegian Labor and Welfare Service said in a monthly report.
The non-adjusted rate fell to 2.6% from 2.8% in August, in line with the median estimate of seven economists in a Bloomberg survey. The number of jobless fell to 69,564, the lowest since June, from 73,523 in August.
Norges Bank estimates registered unemployment will average 2.75% this year and next. — Bloomberg and reported revenue of about £9.1bil in fiscal 2013. The reported operating profit, after some costs, was £440mil.
The government, which decided in 2011 to privatise Royal Mail, will retain 37.8% to 49.9% of Royal Mail stock, assuming no over-allotment
Power Assets Holdings Ltd, controlled by Asia’s richest man Li Ka-shing, is seeking to raise as much as US$5bil by selling shares in its Hong Kong electricity business, said two people with knowledge of the plan.
Power Assets planned to sell as much a 70% stake in the business, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
That might be worth US$5bil, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plan is private.
A US$5bil sale would be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong since October 2010, when AIA Group Ltd raised US$20.4bil, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. — Bloomberg options. Another 15% of shares may be made available beyond the base offer, it said.
Institutional bookbuilding was expected to close on Oct 8, it said. The government expects about 70% of the base offer to go to institutional investors. — Bloomberg
Spanish consumer price inflation eased in September to reach its slowest pace since February 2010 as the government squeezes the domestic economy under pressure from the European Union (EU).
The EU-harmonised measure for inflation increased 0.5% from a year ago compared with 1.6% in August as the effect of an increase in sales tax dropped out of the annual comparison, Spain’s National Statistics Institute INE said.
The result was less than the median estimate of 0.9% in a Bloomberg survey of 13 economists.
“Inflation is falling to the levels where it should really be,” said Sara Balina, chief economist for Spain at Madrid-based consultancy Analistas Financieros Internacionales. — Bloomberg
Graham Hawkes, inventor of the “underwater plane,” made his debut at the Monaco Yacht Show this week in a bid to entice billionaire boat owners to take the plunge.
“This is literally like flying underwater,” Hawkes, a UK-born ocean engineer who has spent decades designing cutting-edge diving suits and submarines, said in an interview. “Once you’ve done that, you don’t want to do anything else.”
Hawkes is one of four submarine vendors who for the first time are all at the Monaco show – one of the world’s top yacht gatherings – to display multimillion-dollar hightech wizardry they say makes perfect accessories for the wealthy.
U-Boat Worx, Triton Submarines LLC and Seamagine Hydrospace Corp, along with Hawkes Ocean Technologies are betting the superrich will want to go beyond cruising on luxury boats worth tens of millions of dollars. They see annual sales of private, small luxury submarines going double-digit over the coming decade from a few now.
As the yacht size has stretched – this year saw the launch of a record-holding 590-footer called the Azzam – so has the list of distractions onboard. Soaking in a jacuzzi, shooting hoops on a floating court or playing a baby grand Steinway piano no longer cut it.
“There is a change in attitude of super-yacht owners,” said Bert Houtman, founder and chairman of the Netherlands-based U-Boat Worx, surveying two of his submarine models on display quai-side in Monaco. “They’re fed up with drinking white wine and riding jet skis so they’re looking for another thrill.”
The submersibles on offer cost from around US$1.5mil to US$4.2mil depending on their size and underwater range. The current global fleet is estimated at under a couple dozen including on private yachts such as Octopus, owned by Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen.
There’s one on Necker Island owned by Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group Ltd, and another on a tourist island off Costa Rica, where a 300 m dive costs US$1,800 per person.
U-Boat’s five models equipped with bubble-shaped acrylic windows can hold between two and five people and sink to between 100 m and 1,000 m underwater. — Bloomberg