Download PDF Introduction Vivendi, the French media conglomerate, has reached an agreement to buy activist investor Amber Capital’s 17.9% stake in Lagardère, the French media and retail group. The takeover of Lagardère, owner of the Paris Match magazine and Europe 1 radio, would see the creation of one of Europe’s Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Following the dramatic shift of retail shopping to online channels in the wake of the pandemic, online marketplaces such as Amazon presented enormous opportunities for entrepreneurs to grow an online business. E-commerce roll-up companies or aggregators seek to purchase such successful Amazon third-party sellers, and then use Read more…
Download PDF PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) Market Cap as of 17th September 2021 – $324.7bn Paidy – privately owned Introduction On September 8th PayPal Holdings Inc. announced its intention to acquire Japanese Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) company Paidy Inc. for $2.7bn in a largely cash deal. This deal, expected to close in the fourth Read more…
Download PDF USA The main U.S. indexes fell this week after data on consumer sentiment was below expectations, raising doubts about the pace that the economic recovery will take and the inflation outlook. The moves in stocks show investors grappling with mixed economic data in the U.S. and China, the Read more…
Download PDF Introduction In a recent article on the FT George Soros harshly criticized foreign investment into China, pointing out the many risks that such a move might involve for investors and providing and indictment of what he perceived as worsening conditions of the “rule of law” in China, due Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Structured products are complex OTC derivatives which offer a glance into some of the deeper aspects of pricing; they are hedged with vanilla products where possible, almost always leaving basis risk, the management of which is the art of making markets in SPs. These products are very Read more…
Download PDF Welcome back from the summer break! Let BSIC present you some of the most interesting deals over the last summer, we hope you will enjoy! TMT AT&T’s $43bn deal to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery Deal Value: $43bn | Deal Type: Acquisition | Date: 17-May-2021 | Nationality: US AT&T (NYSE: T) agreed to merge its Read more…
Download PDF Introduction A leveraged buyout is the acquisition of a company, either privately or publicly held, using borrowed funds to pay for the purchase price of the company. The main actor of a leveraged buyout transaction is a private equity firm or group of private equity firms, which will Read more…
Download PDF USA The main U.S. indexes gained this week after positive quarter releases and good economic data. Investors spent much of April grappling with two competing dynamics: signs of a strong economic rebound in the U.S., and worsening Covid-19 cases elsewhere in the world that threaten to hamper the Read more…
Download PDF In the previous article of our series, we highlighted the questionable use of cross currency swaps and concluded that this kind of window dressing techniques are a manifestation of the larger issue of problematic debt management on the sovereign entity scale. In this article, we delve deeper into Read more…
Download PDF Football industry overview During the last couple of decades, football became a huge industry within the overall sports space. Ever-growing revenues of football clubs coming from advertising, broadcasting rights, and merchandising result in stellar salaries and exponentially rising transfer market prices, as such spending is considered as almost Read more…
Download PDF LVMH (MC.PA) Market Cap as of 30th April 2021 – €315.40bn Tod’s (TOD.MI) Market Cap as of 30th April 2021 – €1.30bn Introduction On April 23rd the news broke that the luxury-powerhouse LVMH has acquired a 6.8% stake in Italian shoe and leather goods producer Tod’s. This increases Read more…
Download PDF Introduction Industrial metals were in the news in the past few weeks because of the remarkable surge in prices. Copper has received most of the attention, with its spot price topping 10,000$/metric ton on April 29, close to the all-time high of 10,190$/metric ton reached in February 2011. Read more…
Download PDF Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) – Market Cap as of 24/04/2021: $58.09bn Introduction On April 14th Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, went public via a direct listing and reached a valuation of over $80bn. The NASDAQ assigned a pre-emptive reference price of $250 per share, Read more…
Download PDF Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Market Cap as of 23rd April 2021 $1.96tn Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) Market Cap as of 23rd April 2021 $15.16bn Introduction On April 11, 2021, Microsoft Corporation entered into a definitive settlement to acquire Nuance Communications in exchange for all-cash consideration of $19.7bn, representing the second-largest Read more…