Just looking Banco Santander could be considering the purchase of Portugal’s Novo Banco.
Three different sources have told Reuters that Novo Banco’s owner, U.S. private equity firm Lone Star, could move forward with an initial public offering (IPO) or a sale of around €1.3 billion for Portugal’s fourth-largest bank.
“It’s a question of opportunity and price,” commented Pedro Castro Almeida, Santander’s executive chairman in Portugal, during a recent business conference.
Novo Banco was created in August 2014 after the Bank of Portugal intervened to save the non-toxic assets of bankrupted Banco Espirito Santo, and Castro Almeida pointed out that foreign lenders not present in Portugal were less likely to buy the bank.
London snub FOLLOWING a £1.5 billion (€1.8 billion) flotation in 2014, food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway is delisting from London.
The company later reversed its decision to cancel its Amsterdam listing after the 2020 Just Eat-Takeaway merger and, as a secondary company, was removed from the FTSE 100 in 2021.
Now headquartered in Amsterdam, the company decided to leave owing to the compliance burden and the cost of maintaining the London listing.
Takeover called off Grifols shares plummeted after Canadian investment fund Brookfield dropped takeover plans on November 27.
The pharmaceutical company, whose siege by short-sellers Gotham City wiped €2.8 billion off its value in January, maintained that the Brookfield offer was too low.
The Canadian company was prepared to pay €10.5 per share, putting a market value of €6.45 billion on the Barcelona-based company but a spokesman for the founding family said that Grifols had a “much higher value.”
Grifols shares fell 12 per cent on the morning of November 27, while the Ibex 35, Spain’s stock market index, dropped by 0.8 per cent.
Luton shock STELLANTIS announced plans to close the Vauxhall van factory in Luton, putting 1,100 local jobs at risk.
The company, which also owns Fiat, Citroen and Peugeot, plans to switch electric van production to the Ellesmere Port (Cheshire) plant which will received £50 million (€60 million) in investment. Several hundred Luton workers could be relocated, Stellantis revealed.
The company attributed the decision to close the Bedfordshire plant to the “UK’s economic conditions” and the government’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate aimed at speeding up electric vehicle production.
Playing hard to get Basque steel company Sidenor has offered European private equity firm Trilantic €250 million, equivalent to €4.05 per share, for its stake in train manufacturer Talgo.
According to sources quoted in the Spanish and European media, the offer has not impressed Trilantic, headed by Spaniard Javier Bañon.
The fund is said to be holding out for the €5 per share offered by Hungary’s Ganz-MaVag consortium in an earlier takeover bid that the Spanish government thwarted last August on national security grounds.
Falklands riches AN oilfield beneath the Falkland Islands is larger than originally believed, an independent report showed.
The original estimate of 791 million barrels has been upped to 917 million and Rockhopper Exploration, based in Salisbury (Wiltshire), will extract 532 million barrels instead of its earlier estimate of 312 million.
Much of the remainder could still be extracted, Rockhopper said.
The Falkland Islands’ government, which governs itself apart from Foreign Policy and Defence, has approved production, despite the Labour government’s ban on further oil and gas licences.