Data

Medline deal subdues the buyout club

7 Jun 2021

Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman are buying a majority stake in the $34 bln medical supplies maker. Compared with past club deals, there’s less leverage and financial wizardry, but also less scope for friction, with the founding Mills family keeping a strong upper hand.

Unloved Cloudera tries $5.3 bln revamp in private

1 Jun 2021

The cloud software company went public in 2017 when its hype was already fading, and competition from Amazon has only intensified. A low return on the current business for the private equity buyers suggests the upside is chasing bigger markets rather than cutting costs.

Biden’s vaccine pledge looks too modest

12 Mar 2021

The U.S. president wants to make shots available to all Americans by May 1 – but vaccine production rates and real-time data like air traveler numbers show things are moving quicker. Wall Street may also be underestimating how fast sectors from aviation to hotels will recover.

Sports data a better bet than sports wagers

1 Feb 2021

Genius Sports, which collects live data for betting shops, is going public with a blank-check company for $1.5 bln. As U.S. legalized gambling grows and teams diversify revenue, data should become more valuable. Gaining an early advantage gives it an edge over future competitors.

LSE’s big deal makes its fortunes data-dependent

1 Feb 2021

The London Stock Exchange Group’s takeover of Refinitiv, which has closed after 18 months, lifts its value to $82 bln including debt. Most revenue now comes from charging for information, not handling trades. Investors aren’t giving CEO David Schwimmer full credit for the shift.

Stage is set for a record year of M&A

6 Jan 2021

S&P Global, AstraZeneca and Salesforce helped push fourth-quarter deal volume over $1 trln. Flush balance sheets and ultra-cheap money add momentum. So do CEOs struggling to find growth on their own. Regulators could get tougher, but the 2015 peak of $4.2 trln is within reach.

Viewsroom: Predictions and prescriptions (Part 2)

31 Dec 2020

A Joe Biden-Xi Jinping reset will be unsatisfying; China’s economic revival will frustrate critics; Southeast Asia will be the next tech hot spot; HSBC will retreat from America; and Hong Kong’s exchange will rethink deals. Pete Sweeney, Jennifer Hughes and Robyn Mak discuss.

Data centres will become green activists’ target

24 Dec 2020

Server farms and networks each use around 1% of the world’s electricity – more, for now, than electric vehicles. That could hit double-digits by 2030 thanks to 5G and other trends, making related emissions a problem. Poor disclosures put Amazon and peers in ESG investors’ sights.

Viewsroom: Predictions and prescriptions (Part 1)

23 Dec 2020

Governments will become activist investors; U.S. airlines will merge; data centres will be the new ESG target; energy giants to consider renewable spinoffs; Tesla will buy Daimler; European soccer gets more American and more. Rob Cox, Peter Thal Larsen and Lauren Silva weigh in.

EU’s Google-Fitbit approval sets risky precedent

17 Dec 2020

Antitrust tsar Margrethe Vestager approved the $2.1 bln deal with conditions. The buyer’s pledges, like giving rival fitness trackers equal access to the Android operating system, are great in theory but hard to monitor. Vestager may only spot the loopholes once the harm is done.

S&P’s IHS swoop opens door to messy bidding war

30 Nov 2020

The U.S. index giant has offered to buy its domestic rival for $44 billion including debt. The deal brings synergies and scale in the hot area of financial data, but the returns look skinny. And the premium is not big enough to see off a counter bid from the likes of ICE.

Could Bill Ackman’s SPAC buy Bloomberg or Airbnb?

21 Oct 2020

The media firm and the home-sharing app have both been reported as possible targets for the activist hedge fund manager’s blank-check company. His $5 billion hook could land a big fish by taking a small stake. But large, well-known private firms don't need a SPAC to go public.

Everyone looks like a deal amateur in TikTok mess

25 Sep 2020

U.S. orders to divest assets are often straightforward. But dizzying contradictions from both dealmakers and the White House have given ByteDance a free pass around rules to sell TikTok. The resulting chaos obscures the stakes: handling data security and foreign takeover laws.

Palantir float marks peak investor apathy

23 Sep 2020

The cryptic data-analytics company is setting a guide valuation of $20 billion for its direct listing next week. Its novel governance means the three founders are in control indefinitely. Incoming shareholders should assume their views won’t count.

U.S. WeChat ban adopts China’s Great Firewall

22 Sep 2020

A U.S. judge gave WeChat a break from an order barring downloads to protect national security. But the White House still wants to push out Chinese tech, echoing Beijing bans of American internet firms. It’s a road map for more censorship and ups the ante on online protectionism.

Trump writes cliffhanger into TikTok reality show

18 Sep 2020

The White House will stop Americans from downloading the video app and WeChat, both Chinese-owned. The plot centers on national-security worries but the immediate drama is of the U.S. president's making. Shifting a TikTok deadline past election day adds to the political intrigue.

Snowflake-led IPO boomlet puts hope over profit

14 Sep 2020

The cloud-data firm’s $3 bln public debut will be the largest IPO this year, in the busiest week for new listings since 2014. The glut of tech-heavy deals will keep investment bankers happy. But with many of the candidates losing money, investors are betting big on fast growth.

Palantir investor day is direct-listing bonus

8 Sep 2020

The data-analytics firm is making its big pitch this week. There is plenty to cover, like the rationale for variable-voting shares. Unlike an IPO, at least it’s a public event. Work-management outfit Asana is next. Future candidates for direct listings may raise capital, too.

Viewsroom: Silicon Valley spotlight

30 Jul 2020

The CEOs of Big Tech companies faced off against U.S. lawmakers during an antitrust hearing that raised new evidence about past acquisitions. Meanwhile, Japan’s Ootoya and Colowide engage in a food M&A fight. And: SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son’s next steps.

Big Tech bosses face hot air and hard truths

29 Jul 2020

Bosses of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google faced a predictable array of silly questions during their Washington hearing. But they also faced some pointed examples of their firms throwing their weight around. Cook, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Pichai have some self-examination to do.