M&A

In a joint statement by both companies on 2nd March 2022, Canadian airline company Westjet Group announced the acquisition of rival Sunwing Airlines for an undisclosed cost. This acquisition is the first major move for Westjet since private equity firm Onex acquired it for 3.5 billion USD in 2019. The deal is set to be…

On Monday 28th February, US-based payments technology firm Sezzle was acquired by Zip, an Australian financial technology firm. The deal values Sezzle at 355 million USD, which represents a 22% premium compared to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed shares previous to the announcement. The transaction has been approved unanimously by the boards of the…

In a transaction worth 6.6 billion USD, the low-cost airline Frontier has agreed to purchase rival airline Spirit, with Spirit shareholders receiving a 19 per cent premium compared to the value of their shareholding before the announcement. Spirit shares were only trading up by 13% in midday trading, however, representing uncertainty about whether the deal…

On 1st February 2022, oil and gas group Parkmead announced their acquisition of wind farm owner Kempstone Hill for a price of 3.29 million GBP. The deal adds a 1.5-megawatt (MW) Scotland-based onshore wind farm to Parkmead’s portfolio. This transaction will be completed through a 990,000 GBP loan. Parkmead said the acquisition will help it…

Launching a bid that would create one of the biggest ever transactions involving London-listed businesses, Unilever has proposed multiple offers for the consumer health division of the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in recent months. GSK stated that it had received several offers for the business from Unilever, with the latest being a 50 billion GBP…

On Monday 22nd November, American private equity firm KKR began the process of a 33 billion USD offer for Telecom Italia (TIM), Italy’s largest communications company by revenue that provides telecom, mobile and data services. This price represents a 45% premium over the price of the company’s stock before the offer. The share price of…

On 13th September 2020, the world-leading AI computing company, NVIDIA, announced its acquisition of the Cambridge-based central processing unit (CPU) giant Arm Holdings in what has become the largest global semiconductors deal in history. The deal valued SoftBank-owned Arm at 40 billion USD, which NVIDIA would pay using their own shares and cash. The central…

On 3rd November 2021, the world’s fourth-largest renewable energy producer, EDP Renewables (EDPR), agreed to acquire a majority stake in the Singapore-based energy system developer Sunseap for a total of 810 million USD. The deal will result in EDPR owning at least 87.4% of shareholdings, which could potentially increase to 91.4%, depending on the willingness…

In early October, Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) completed a successful bid for WM Morrison’s group, beating Softbank-owned Fortress Investment Group in a fiercely competitive process. With the deal expected to be completed in the coming weeks, the transaction values the grocery business at 9.95 billion GBP. The completed takeover will mark the end of…