A look at some must-read news on deals and deal makers around the world
Australia's politicians are down on down under exchange merger
Canada, of course, isn't the only country dealing with a politically charged review of a proposed merger of its exchange operator with that of another country. Australia's ASX and the Singapore exchange operator have presented Canberra with a similar conundrum, and the betting is increasingly that the politicians will see the vote-winning path as blocking the deal.
The assessment in Australia is that the plan to put together the companies that run the exchanges in Australia and Singapore faces a bleak prospect of political approval, as the Australian irreverently lays out in this article.
The Herald Sun, another Australian paper, takes a rather more staid look here.
Evercore is the big winner in AT&T
Whose stock jumped the most on the announcement that AT&T Corp. was going to buy T Mobile USA? Probably that of Evercore, one of the advisers on the deal. Evercore, an independent advisory firm, has snagged a number of high profile assignments of late, proving the boutique model is a winner and that getting work isn't totally tied to being able to lend on a deal. Greenhill & Co., another boutique, also advised AT&T.
That's not to say that balance sheet can't still play a role, as JP Morgan found. The bank is offering a $20-billion bridge loan to AT&T, and is the third advisor to the company.
And what did they help AT&T buy? A company that's losing subscribers, a rare feat in U.S. mobile, and for the privilege of doing so AT&T paid twice its own valuation, as Bloomberg illustrates.
Should Groupon offer half-off on its valuations?
Globe and Mail numbers guy David Milstead tears into Groupon's business model and finds that the company is not worth the $25-billion valuations being bandied about. Now, maybe, if the shares came with a coupon...
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