Companies in the news ... and how they were assessed
Gkn/melrose: all over by Easter?
“What a waste of paper,” said Alistair Osborne in The Times. “No sooner does GKN pop up with another 52 pages imploring investors to ‘reject the Melrose offer’” than Melrose increases its bid by nearly a billion, to a take-it-or-leave-it £8.1bn. Welcome to the tortuous world of Britain’s most controversial takeover battle – a lengthy siege for control of one of the UK’S oldest engineering giants, which has split politicians and City investors alike. Is the end now finally in sight? Very possibly. The GKN board has rejected the new offer. Now shareholders must decide, and the message from Melrose chairman Christopher Miller is clear: “accept the bid and it could all be over by Easter”. Painted by some as an “evil” asset-stripper, the Mayfair-based turnaround specialist hopes to convince shareholders to snub GKN boss Anne Stevens’s shake-up plan, which was given “added impetus” last week when the group agreed to sell its Driveline car-parts business to the US giant Dana for £4.4bn, said the London Evening Standard. Critics reckon the GKN board has been making up policy as they go, yet they’ve given shareholders a clear choice, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. “They can support a new structure that gives clarity to the intrinsic value” of GKN’S businesses, “or opt for the unknowns of a Melrose break-up”. There’s still everything to play for.
Saudi Aramco: float postponed
“Investors hoping for the chance to buy a piece of Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil behemoth, will probably have to wait,” said Michael J. de la Merced in The New York Times. Aramco had indicated that it expected to launch “what would easily be the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering” later this year – with London, New York and Hong Kong all in the frame to host it in a joint listing with the Saudi Tadawul exchange. The move was supposed to be the “centrepiece of an ambitious economic overhaul of Saudi Arabia by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman”, so why the delay? One reason is that “advisers have struggled to achieve the $2trn valuation that Prince Mohammed wants”, said the Financial Times. “Saudi Aramco’s finances and internal operations have been shrouded in secrecy for decades, and its close relationship with the state has raised financial, legal and regulatory challenges.” The Saudis have also been split on where to float. The prince himself is reported to favour New York, but officials and Aramco executives have said privately that “London might be a better fit”.
Goldman Sachs: wassup, DJ D-sol?
There’s a “game of thrones” at Goldman Sachs, said Thornton Mcenery on Dealbreaker. After reports last week that the bank’s long-standing CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, would quit at the end of the year, the betting favoured president and co-chief operating officer Harvey Schwartz to take his place. Then, just like that, Schwartz was gone. His sudden “retirement” has narrowed the contest to succeed Blankfein down to just one internal candidate, David Solomon, who ran Goldman’s investment banking arm from 2006 to 2016, said Julia Kollewe in The Guardian. That would be a departure for the bank, “which has been led by traders in recent years”. But Solomon is rather different in other ways too. Outside work, he’s known as DJ D-sol and likes to spin dance music at nightclubs. It’s always handy to have a fallback option.