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BBC | Analysis: Microsoft without Yahoo
BusinessWeek | Microsoft Drops Bid for Yahoo
Financial Times | Yahoo under pressure after deal collapse
Bloomberg | Microsoft Walks Away From Yahoo After Fight on Price
CNBC | As Deal Unravels, Pressure Is on Yahoo to Perform
Reuters | Investors eye Yahoo’s alternatives to Microsoft
The Economist | Microsoft throws in the towel
The New York Times | Microsoft-Yahoo: What Everyone’s Talking About
The Wall Street Journal | Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Offer After Attempt to Bridge Gap in Price
Tag Archive for 'M&A'
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The mood in London financial markets is not good. House prices are going down, and with them the British pound. Investment bankers within UBS are looking around for jobs, and the Royal Bank of Scotland is sweeping ABN Amro’s trading floor clean with incredible lack of style:
ABN’s structured credit traders were apparently told on Thursday that they should report to RBS’ London office in preparation for a move there on Monday. Terminals needed to be checked and such like. And when they got there… they were all fired (full story).
Luckily, the British have a great sense of humour, and I couldn’t stop laughing at this economic assessment of London 2010 from the price of everything blog:
London, April 2010 – Wall Street firms have just announced their latest results for FY 2009;
300 million staff have been “written down”, leaving just two (Sid and Doris Bonkers) to manage the investment banks’ remaining worldwide debt, equity, merger and advisory, securitisation, syndication and prime brokerage businesses.
Marti Peeps, sole analyst at the last remaining research house, Teletext, welcomed the results as “a bold step in the face of ongoing bad debt provisioning,” though conceded that the City’s newly “rightsized” payroll might struggle to take on board the burgeoning supply of new issuance, namely the packet of Walkers Crisps rumoured to be hitting the primary market in late summer 2012.Hopes for a recovery in Wall Street earnings have for several quarters hinged on the prospects for the successful completion of a 40p private placement of a bag of Salt and Vinegar flavour crisps on behalf of the Walkers Crisps Company. Lead underwriters JPCitigroupMerrill, a subsidiary of the US government, and Northern Rock SocGen KFW Nomura, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesco plc (Neasden branch), are rumoured to have “solid” interest for the underwriting, most notably from Asia, itself a subsidiary of Texas Pacific Group, but declined to go into further detail. (click here for pdf version. Enjoy!)
Update @ April 15th: London’s financial services sector faces a loss of 20,000 jobs over the next two years. Cuts by Citigroup and RBS are the tip of the iceberg (BusinessWeek).
Today, (February 1st) Microsoft Corporation, the world’s biggest software maker, made an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! Inc. to challenge Google Inc.‘s dominance in Internet search services and advertising. The proposed deal, which would transform the software and internet-services industries, values Yahoo! at $31 a share, a 62% premium over the closing price on Thursday. What will the outcome be?

Chinese computer maker Lenovo has completed its $1.75 billion purchase of IBM’s personal computer division, creating the world’s third-largest PC maker, the company said Sunday. The deal — one of the biggest foreign acquisitions ever by a Chinese company — is expected to quadruple sales of Lenovo Group Ltd., already Asia’s biggest computer maker, the company said earlier. Complete coverage of this story can be found here and here.
Lenovo was founded in 1984 by academics at the government-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences and first worked out of a small cottage. First set up to distribute equipment made by IBM and other companies, by 1990 it was selling PCs under its own brand name.
IBM now focuses on consulting and software, outsourcing much of its manufacturing. The sale to Lenovo is expected to cut production costs and breathe new life into the PC business, which now accounts for a small portion of IBM’s total sales and profits.
Combining two of the largest makers of software for creating and delivering digital content, Adobe Systems Inc. said Monday it will acquire Macromedia Inc. in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.
Both companies said the long-rumored acquisition was not to consolidate and cut costs but to help Adobe expand into new markets, particularly in the area of providing content to mobile phones and other handheld devices
“This is not a consolidation play. This is all about growth,” said Bruce Chizen, Adobe’s chief executive. “We’re doing this because we believe the combined offerings will be even more compelling to our customers given the challenges they’re going to face in trying to communicate information in this very complex environment.”
Neither company would speculate Monday on actual product plans after the deal is closed.
There is some product overlap, including Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand in graphics design, Adobe GoLive and Dreamweaver for Web page creation, and Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks for working with photos and other graphics.
Under terms of the deal, approved by the companies’ boards of directors, Macromedia stockholders will receive 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of their Macromedia common stock.
That will result in Macromedia stockholders owning about 18 percent of the combined company when the deal closes.
Shares of Adobe lost $6.77, or 11 percent, to $53.89, in Monday morning trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Macromedia shares gained $2.76, or 8.3 percent, to $36.21.
The transaction, contingent upon the approval of regulators as well as the shareholders of both companies, is expected to be completed by the fall. The combined company will keep Adobe’s name and San Jose headquarters.
According to Adobe: The combination of Adobe and Macromedia will provide customers a more powerful set of solutions for creating, managing and delivering compelling content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. Together, the two companies will meet a wider set of customer needs and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets, particularly in the mobile and enterprise segments.




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