Owner Vivendi to offload 10% stake worth €3bn with more deals likely to cash in on music revival
Universal Music Group, the home of stars including Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and The Beatles, has sold a 10% stake to a consortium led by Chinese tech giant Tencent in a deal valuing the world’s largest music company at €30bn (€25bn).
UMG’s parent company, Vivendi, which is controlled by the French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, has also agreed that the Tencent-led consortium has the option to buy another stake of up to 10% at the same price by 15 January 2021.
Continue reading...Advent International also commits to British HQ, which employs about 1,700 staff
The new US owner of the UK defence company Cobham has pledged to keep jobs and investment in Britain as the government faces increasing criticism for allowing the £4bn takeover to go ahead.
The world-leading expert in air-to-air refuelling said its private-equity buyer, Advent International, had committed to maintaining a UK headquarters and to continue funding research and development at its Dorset offices. It has also vowed to keep using the company’s name, which references Sir Alan Cobham who founded the firm in 1934.
Continue reading...Dutch takeaway company and offshoot of South African group up offers for food delivery firm
The battle for control of Just Eat has intensified after fresh rival bids for the UK food delivery business.
Takeaway.com of the Netherlands upped its all-share merger offer to a deal worth 916p a share. The offer, which would create one of the biggest food delivery groups in the world, values Just Eat at nearly £6.3bn, up from a previous bid in the summer that valued the company’s shares at 731p each.
Continue reading...Relief for PSA’s Vauxhall workers in Ellesmere Port as there will be no factory closures
Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler have agreed terms of a £38bn (€34bn) merger that will create the world’s fourth largest carmaker, the companies announced on Wednesday.
The two parent companies, PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, confirmed there will be no plant closures as part of €3.7bn in cost savings from the merger, a key concern for more than 1,000 workers at PSA’s Vauxhall factory in Ellesmere Port.
Continue reading...Jitters in Whitehall grow over any further delay with government spending £1m a day to keep business alive
The Chinese firm poised to buy British Steel has denied the deal is in danger of collapse, amid concern that any further delay in the already lengthy sale process will make the business less attractive to alternative buyers.
Jingye, an industrial giant founded by a former Communist party official, agreed to buy British Steel in early November after an earlier round of talks with the pension fund of the Turkish military broke down.
Continue reading...Lawrence Stroll, owner of Formula One team Racing point, seeking large stake
Shares in Aston Martin have surged on reports that the billionaire owner of a Formula One racing team is preparing to bid for a significant stake in the luxury carmaker.
Lawrence Stroll, the owner of Racing Point, is leading a consortium that is considering a stake in the British firm, according to Autocar.
Continue reading...Key issue is how well assets such as railways and energy would run under public ownership, not the cost
The Institute for Fiscal Studies is asking the right question about Labour’s nationalisation plans. The key issue is how well the assets would be run under public ownership. What is the party hoping to achieve that could not be done via smarter regulation?
This part of the debate has been obscured by endless quarrels over how much it would cost to nationalise rail, mail, water, energy and BT Openreach. On the cost score, the IFS report merely offered a factual two-part answer, one of which was necessarily imprecise.
Related: IFS warns Labour renationalisation may delay low-carbon economy
Continue reading...DMGT will integrate some operations but appears to rule out editorial job cuts
The owner of the Daily Mail has bought the i newspaper and website for £49.6m as a new wave of media consolidation hits the UK national and regional newspaper market.
Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), which also owns the Mail on Sunday and Mail Online, had been the frontrunner to seal a deal after entering exclusive talks with the i’s parent, JPI Media, in September.
Continue reading...It’s hard to see why the Chinese firm wants to take over a loss-making business in a tough market
Half the woes for steelmakers in Britain derive from dumping into world markets by Chinese producers, or so we have been told for a couple of decades. So it is a strange sort of rescue for British Steel that ownership should pass to a little-known Chinese conglomerate, Jingye, offering a vague promise to invest a large sum.
Any buyer is better than none, of course, since the effects of irreversible closure of the Scunthorpe steelworks would be appalling. Top of the list would be 4,000 jobs, with another 20,000 in the supply chain. Then there would be the huge environmental clean-up costs.
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