Bidding war for Man United kicks off; plus Reuters deals scoops of the week featuring Finastra, Simon & Schuster, Northvolt and Kum & Go
Happy Friday!
The most high-profile sports auction in the world is attracting the attention of some of the richest people in the world and other high-profile names from the global investment community. Earlier today, Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani, a son of Qatar’s former prime minister, launched a bid to buy Premier League soccer club Manchester United, whose American owners launched a formal sale process late last year.
A deal for United is expected to shatter records for the sale of a sports business. The club's current majority owners, the Glazer family, are seeking a valuation as high as 7 billion pounds ($8.42 billion), Reuters has previously reported.
The record 20-time English champions, have over 650 million fans worldwide, according to market research firm Kantar.
Sheikh Jassim is the son of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who is one of the richest men in the Gulf state.
However, Qatari state investors, who own a stake in French champions Paris Saint-Germain, could face challenges structuring a takeover of Manchester United, as rules forbid two clubs with the same owner taking part in the lucrative Champions League.
Sheikh Hamad is the owner of PSG and it is unclear how the Qatari bid will be structured.
Suitors have been asked to submit a bid amount and proof of funds after which Raine Group, the investment bank running the sale process, will draw up a shortlist.
Elsewhere, my colleagues on the Reuters deals team, Amy-Jo Crowley, David French and Andres Gonzalez, scooped that Finastra, a financial technology company owned by buyout firm Vista Equity Partners, is exploring a sale of its banking unit for as much as $7 billion.
The London-based company is in the process of carving out the business known as universal banking, which provides software to banks and credit unions to run core processes, as it prepares to kick off a sale process in the coming weeks.
Finastra is working with a financial adviser as it explores options for the business, which currently generates about $1.7 billion in revenue and roughly $500 million of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.
Potential buyers of the universal banking unit include other private equity firms, as well as rivals in the financial software space.
I teamed up with Amy-Jo Crowley to report that Paramount Global is again seeking to sell Simon & Schuster, months after the media company's $2.2 billion deal to sell the book publisher to Penguin Random House collapsed.
Paramount, formerly known as ViacomCBS, is working with a financial adviser to explore a sale of Simon & Schuster that could value it between $2 billion and $2.5 billion.
Paramount will court private equity firms as potential buyers of Simon & Schuster because they do not compete with it and would not raise competition concerns with U.S. regulators that led to the demise of the Penguin deal last year.
It is unclear whether publishing rivals, such as HarperCollins, controlled by News Corp, and European publisher Hachette Publishing, owned by Vivendi-Lagardère, would defy potential regulatory hurdles and make a bid for Simon & Schuster.
Both these companies had expressed an interest in buying Simon & Schuster before the deal with Penguin, owned by German media group Bertelsmann, was torpedoed.
My colleague in Sweden, Supantha Mukherjee, and I were also first to report that Northvolt, the Swedish lithium-ion battery producer that counts BMW and Volkswagen among its investors, is close to hiring banks for an initial public offering (IPO) that could value the company at more than $20 billion.
The company, which last raised funding from investors at a valuation of $12 billion in 2021, is expected to tap Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to lead a stock market launch.
Northvolt is discussing listing its shares in Europe or New York within the next 12 months.
Northvolt has raised about $8 billion in debt and equity to date from a wide range of investors, including Baillie Gifford and Folksam Group.
The potential share sale would come in an IPO market in gradual recovery from a 2022 slump driven by stock market volatility and fears of an economic slowdown.
And last, but not the least, Abigail Summerville scooped that the Krause family is exploring options for Kum & Go, the U.S. convenience store chain it launched more than 60 years ago, potentially including a sale of the company that could value it at close to $2 billion.
The family is working with JPMorgan Chase to identify the most financially attractive option for Kum & Go as the U.S. convenience store sector experiences a wave of consolidation.
Kum & Go's owners are also exploring a refinancing, real estate leasebacks or other forms of recapitalization as potential alternatives.
Convenience store operators have turned to dealmaking in the face of high inflation to save on costs through economies of scale and expand their footprint.
ARKO Corp agreed in October to buy Pride Convenience Holdings LLC, an operator of 31 convenience stores, for $230 million. One month earlier, ARKO agreed to acquire about 150 convenience stores and fuel supply rights to approximately 200 commercial customers from Transit Energy Group for $375 million plus the value of inventory. Also, 7-Eleven acquired Speedway from Marathon Petroleum Corp. in 2020 for $21 billion, marking the largest acquisition in sector history.
Kum & Go has already shed some stores. Last year, it sold 14 convenience stores in Missouri that no longer aligned with its expansion plans to White Oak Station.
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And here’s a quick recap of the other highlights of the Reuters corporate finance file this week:
Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance had secret access to a bank account belonging to its purportedly independent U.S. partner and transferred large sums of money from the account to a trading firm managed by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, banking records and company messages show.
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Australia's Newcrest Mining rebuffed Newmont Corp's $16.9 billion takeover bid, but left the door open for a better offer as it logged profit that surged past analyst expectations and paid out a special dividend.
Self-storage properties operator Life Storage rebuffed an $11 billion all-stock takeover bid from bigger rival Public Storage.
Iranian-American billionaire Jahm Najafi, chair of MSP Sports Capital, is set to launch a $3.75 billion takeover bid for Premier League soccer club Tottenham Hotspur, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters
Cloud-based software firm Salesforce and activist investor Elliott Management Corp are in discussions to reach an agreement that may end a possible board challenge, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Eminence Capital, a shareholder in Ritchie Bros Auctioneers, has come out against the company's planned acquisition of U.S. auto retailer IAA, opposing a deal that has received support from activists Starboard Value LP and Ancora Group Holdings.
BP will buy truck fueling provider TravelCenters of America for about $1.3 billion, the companies said on Thursday, as the British energy giant seeks to expand its retail network in a bet on biofuels and electric vehicle charging.
Amazon said it is in talks with regulators on its $1.7 billion bid for iRobot, maker of the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba, with the takeover likely to draw tough scrutiny due to regulatory concerns about deals by Big Tech.
Activist investor Engine Capital took a 1% stake in Germany's Brenntag SE and became the second shareholder to urge the chemicals distributor to spin off its specialties unit, saying this would dramatically boost its shares.
Is the IPO winter finally easing? A year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and an inflation rally fueled a bout of market volatility that prevented most initial public offerings in 2022, last week saw a flurry of listings. It is 15 months since there was a busier week, according to Dealogic data.
Banking and payments processing conglomerate Fidelity National Information Services took a $17.6 billion write-down on its merchant business as it unveiled plans to spin it off, undoing a $43 billion acquisition that went sour.
KKR-backed technology firm BMC Software has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Thank you for reading this week’s edition! Please do share the newsletter with anyone you think might be interested – feedback will be most welcome.
To my U.S. readers – enjoy the long weekend!
Warm regards,
Anirban?
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Anirban Sen
Editor in Charge, U.S. Mergers & Acquisitions
Thomson Reuters
Twitter: @asenjourno