Friday, May 4, 0730 BST
ABN Amr-oh
And the winners are ... the lawyers. Barclays was dealt a serious blow in its
campaign to clinch a €140 billion (£96
billion) merger with ABN
Amro when a Dutch judge froze a pivotal "poison pill" side deal.
More on ABN Amro here
The Times says that the rival approach for the Dutch bank by a Royal
Bank of Scotland-led consortium was boosted after the
Dutch commercial court temporarily blocked ABN's planned $21 billion sale of
LaSalle, its US offshoot, to Bank of America.
RBS and its consortium partners, Banco Santander and Fortis, were debating
whether to take advantage of the favourable
judgment to launch an immediate
bid for ABN and/or LaSalle.
The Times comments that the decision will result in a jamboree of
litigation. Bank of America will take action against ABN
Amro for making
promises without consulting shareholders and against Royal Bank of Scotland
for interfering in a
supposedly done deal. Pack your toothbrush for a long,
long journey.
More commentary here
Mortar fire
Fresh takeover relief from the flats of the Netherlands. Hanson, the British
building materials company, is bracing itself
for a £7 billion-plus bid
approach after HeidelbergCement said that it was considering a bid, reports The
Times.
More on Hanson here
Hanson's shares soared more than 20 per cent after the German group said that
it was exploring "the possibility of seeking
to acquire the company".
It is understood that HeidelbergCement could approach Hanson with an offer as
soon as next week in an attempt to gain
access to its books. A source close
to Hanson said: "We believe it is friendly; it just depends on the terms."
Hanson, one of the world's biggest producers of aggregates, is what's left of
one of Britain's great conglomerates of the
Thatcher era. At its zenith, it
was an empire worth more than £14 billion and was more profitable than BP.
BP
Talk about salt and wounds ... Royal Dutch Shell added to the woes of BP by
shrugging off lower oil prices and a fall in
production to deliver record
profits of $6.9 billion (£3.5 billion) for the first quarter of the year.
More on Shell here
The 14 per cent profit increase compares with a 17 per cent slump in BP
earnings for the first three months.
The Times says that BP faces fresh pressure to oust John Manzoni as the
head of its refining and marketing business after
the publication of a
damning internal report into the fatal Texas City explosion.
The internal report revealed that Mr Manzoni failed to heed "serious warning
signals" in the run-up to the blast that
killed 15 workers. Tony
Hayward will be relieved that his first week as chief executive is over.
More on BP here
Iceman guilty
The founder of Baugur, the Icelandic investment group that has been a
voracious acquirer of UK retailers, was found guilty
on Thursday of false
accounting in a Reykjavik court after a five-year legal battle, says the Financial
Times.
More on Baugur here
Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, chief executive of the group, whose investments range
from the Hamleys toy store to House of
Fraser department stores, was given
a three-month suspended prison sentence after being found guilty of a charge
of false
accounting relating to a credit invoice for $589,890 (£296,771).
The prosecution successfully argued that the invoice was used falsely to
inflate Baugur's accounts in 2001 when it was
still a public company. Mr
Jóhannesson's defence team is understood to be planning an appeal.
Of an original 40 charges, Mr Jóhannesson has been acquitted or found not
guilty on all but one.
Insider charge
A New York investment banker has been charged with insider trading after
allegedly leaking confidential information about
pending mergers, including
a deal involving TXU, the Texas utility giant, according to The Wall
Street Journal.
More here
Hafiz Naseem started working at Credit Suisse in March last year and
immediately began sharing information about pending
business deals with a
Pakistani banker, the US Securities and Exchange Commission says.
From his office telephone Mr Naseem is said to have called the banker in
advance of merger announcements. The Pakistani
banker generated profits of
about $5 million by trading on the inside TXU information, the SEC alleges.
Meanwhile, the market watchdog is off the leash. "We know there are others out
there who think they've escaped detection.
They're wrong. We're coming
after them."
UBS
The bigger Swiss bank is not without its own problems on Wall Street. UBS,
facing losses from trades gone wrong in the
sub-prime mortgage market, has
shut a key in-house hedge fund, says The Wall Street Journal.
More on UBS here
The hedge fund, Dillon Read Capital Management, was shut this week after a
$124 million loss which contributed to a drop
in earnings at the bank on
Thursday. The bank expects to book costs of as much as $300 million to shut
the fund.
The problems at the hedge fund come a month after several big-name bankers and
traders said that they would leave UBS,
frustrated over slow
decision-making.
Capitulation raises a profound strategic question, comments The Times.
With investment banking still faltering, but its
client-driven wealth
management division showing superior returns, is now not the time for UBS to
abandon its belief in an
integrated bank and break itself up?
More here
Boots ...
... on the other foot. Trustees to the Alliance Boots pension scheme are
demanding about £1 billion from its private
equity suitors to cover a
shortfall in the retirement plan that was described by the company only a
day earlier as having
a small surplus.
More on Boots here
The Financial Times says that the trustees are understood to be seeking
as much as £500 million in an up-front cash
payment from Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts and Stefano Pessina, the deputy chairman, who joined forces
to take the company
private. It is not thought to be a deal-breaker.
The announcement comes as the Pensions Regulator issued a warning to trustees
about the need for robust negotiations when
a leveraged bid for a solvent
employer significantly weakened the ability of the employer to make cash
contributions in
the future.
The Times comments that KKR may have neglected the trustees. After WH
Smith and Sainsbury's, it should come as no surprise
to anyone in private
equity that pensions are a sensitive issue.
More commentary here
MARKETS
FTSE 100 (Thursday close): up 53.30, or 0.8%, at 6,537.80
Dow (close): up 29.50, or 0.2%, at 13,241.38
Nasdaq (close): up 7.62, or 0.3%, at 2,565.46
S&P 500 (close): up 6.47, or 0.4%, at 1,502.39
Nikkei: closed
Hang Seng (latest): up 163.99, or 0.8%, at 20,845.57
Sterling (latest): $1.9852
Oil (latest): West Texas crude up 1 cent at $63.20
Gold (latest): down 60 cents at $683.80
NEW YORK
The broad-based S&P 500 index breached 1,500 for the first time since
September 2000 after a series of indicators showed
signs of strength in the
economy and a moderate rise in wage inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record for the third successive
day, led by Verizon Communications, the No 2
US telephone company,
after Merrill Lynch increased its share-price estimate.
The rally was prompted by reports showing greater-than-expected growth in the
services sector, a faster-than-expected
increase in productivity and a
slowing rise in labour costs.
The Dow added 0.2 per cent to 13,241.38, the S&P 500 increased 0.4 per cent to
1,502.39 and the technology-laden Nasdaq
advanced 0.3 per cent to 2,565.46.
ASIA
Stocks extended a record high after metals prices climbed and upbeat economic
data in the United States.
BHP Billiton, the biggest mining company, rose to a three-week high as
copper and zinc prices climbed. Rio Tinto, the No 3
miner, also gained.
Samsung, South Korea's largest exporter, advanced on the back of positive
worker productivity and
services figures in the US.
Benchmarks in Australia, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia increased to new
highs, tracking advances in the Morgan
Stanley Capital International
Asia-Pacific excluding Japan Index - up 0.4 per cent to 435.23. Japan is
closed for a public
holiday.
Paul Larter
paul.larter@thetimes.co.uk
MARKETS
The FTSE 100 index registered its best closing level since September 2000 in
reaction to news that Hanson was being
stalked by HeidelbergCement.
Hammerson climbed on news that its chaiman considers the property group a
potential target,
while Prudential gained as shareholders turned up
the pressure on the insurer's break up.
Smiths Group provided one of the day's other breakup stories, as an
investor day hosted by the engineer bolstered
expectations that management
would be open to offers. Meanwhile, International Power bounced off
lows on suggestions that
it could be split up between Suez and Macquarie,
the Australian bank.
BROKERS
Citigroup repeated "buy" advice on BT Group ahead of its
full-year results on May 17, which will be the last presided over
by Sir
Christopher Bland, its outgoing chairman. Sir Christopher's first act in the
job was to ask shareholders to support
a £5.9 billion rights issue. His
last, say Citigroup, will likely be a capital return to shareholders of at
least £2
billion. "By announcing 2008 guidance a quarter early, the
decks are clear for Sir Christopher's parting gift," it told
clients.
The broker added that BT's numbers were "unlikely to spoil the party".
Goldman Sachs added to its "conviction buy" list United Business
Media, the PR Newswire owner, trade publisher and events
organiser. "We
do not believe that the shares fully price in the strong structural story
which we expect to unfold at UBM
in 2008," it said. The US broker saw
profit margins improving as restructuring and investment spend returns to
normal
levels next year, as well as further scope for acquisitions and cash
returns. UBM's balance sheet has a spare capacity of
£600 million, of which
between £150 million and £250 million is likely to go on purchases. it said.
The broker saw 14 per
cent share-price upside against yesterday's closing
price of 827p.
Bryce Elder
bryce.elder@thetimes.co.uk
AGENDA
INTERIMS
BG Group (Q1)
AGMs
Anglogold
Computacenter
Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust
Greystar Resources
Inion Oy
ISIS Property Trust
MDY Healthcare
Charles Taylor Consulting
Serco
St James’s Place
T Clarke
Zest Group
EGMs
Big Yellow Group
SkyePharma
TRADING STATEMENTS
Vantis
ECONOMICS
UK Q1 insolvencies (0930 GMT)
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