Focus on M&A can carry risks for banks
Advisory banking and corporate finance are low-risk businesses to gravitate towards. The snag is that the potential profits also look small
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Fiat Industrial to merge with US unit
Move to simplify group’s structure will create a new entity that will list on New York Stock Exchange, with a secondary listing somewhere in Europe
Three Spanish cajas set for merger
New bank to hold troubled loans of about €12bn
Booker buys Metro’s British operations
German group takes 10% stake in UK wholesaler
Malaysia fund nears £375m Battersea deal
Power station offer set to trump Chelsea FC’s
Busson’s EIM group in merger talks
Pioneer hedge fund manager has three potential suitors
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Comment and Analysis
M&A activity picks up in Europe
Indiscriminate sell-off has left valuations low and opened the door to opportunists to buy and US groups to deploy overseas cash tax efficiently
Industry cautious about M&A recovery
The fund management industry is supposed to be due for consolidation, but 2011’s high M&A deal failure rate looks set to continue
Harder to slot together
Low deal volumes and the collapse of a number of big tie-ups are raising the question of whether the retreat is structural. By Anousha Sakoui.
Leaks plugged but the air is being sucked from M&A
While the flow of leaked activity has been chocked off, the FSA has been reluctant to release its stats, which may have unintended consequences
Mining’s bruiser-in-chief builds a behemoth
Cecil John Rhodes himself might be proud of the the ambitions of Mick Davis, Xstrata chief executive, writes Sylvia Pfeifer
A merger fit for world domination
Consolidating mining and trading bodes ill for consumers. The analogy in the oil market would be a Saudi Arabia producing three times more crude than it already does
M&A in 2012: bumping along the bottom
The number of deals done last year might have been higher than for 2010 as a whole but it was a worse year than dealmakers expected
FT series: Cross border deals
Santander drives on to next set of challenges
The Spanish bank, which has won over UK sceptics since it acquired Abbey National at the end of 2004, now wants to make a bigger mark in corporate banking
Tata confident Corus will regain its lustre
Given the problems since Tata acquired Corus for $13.1bn just over three years ago, opinion is divided on whether the deal will ever deliver the benefits expected from it
Synergies not transparent at Pilkington
Nippon Sheet Glass’s takeover of Pilkington in 2006 may have been friendly, but integrating the groups has been far from easy
Desperate to integrate and focus on growth
The Somerdale debacle is an unwelcome sideshow to Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury, which remains a deal with strategic sense and a clear operational overlap
Japan Tobacco’s Gallaher move catches light
Three years on, JT’s gambit appears to be paying off, and has delivered more than $400m in cost savings and other synergies
Realising synergies is formula for success
The most successful deals, bankers say, are those where the strategy is clear, allowing the acquirer to realise synergies and recover the premium it paid to buy the business
