Financial News (2025)

02/04/2023

Swiss regulators were forced to step in and arrange a deal to prevent a crisis of confidence with Credit Suisse from spreading to the financial system as a whole. A default by a systemically important bank would have unpredictable consequences both in Switzerland and abroad. The merger between UBS and Credit Suisse is expected to be formalised by the end of 2023.

"Under the terms of the deal, which included all shares, Credit Suisse shareholders will receive one UBS share for every 22.48 Credit Suisse shares equal to 0.76 francs ($0.82) for a total of 3 billion francs," the statement said.

The authorities gave both banks a liquidity guarantee of 100 billion Swiss francs in addition to a loan of 50 billion francs, Swiss President Alain Berse said at a news conference in Berne.

The agreement was approved by the Swiss government, which provided guarantees to the country's regulator to provide liquidity to Credit Suisse.

The Federal Council supports the acquisition of Credit Suisse by UBS. To strengthen stability in financial markets for this acquisition the Swiss Confederation is providing a guarantee to the Swiss National Bank to provide further liquidity support to Credit Suisse," the Swiss government said.

The government has also provided 9 billion francs to UBS Group AG to mitigate risks in connection with the acquisition.

Credit Suisse's problems, which have been ongoing for more than a year, have worsened during the world's evolving banking crisis. On 15 March 2023, Credit Suisse suffered the biggest share drop in its history with a 30% drop in its shares as worries about its financial situation led to a deposit outflow of more than 10 billion francs in a day.

01/04/2023

Canadian investment firm Ethical Capital Partners did not disclose the amount of the deal, nor the source of funding that enabled the six founders to acquire MindGeek, which has more than 130 million daily visitors to its websites.

MindGeek is registered in Luxembourg and has been a leader in the adult video industry since the advent of streaming.

MindGeek posted revenue of $460 million in 2018, according to its latest disclosure, while the business had a profitability of around 50%, according to knowledgeable sources.

The Financial Times in 2020 unravelled MindGeek's complex ownership structure and revealed that its beneficiary was businessman Bernd Bergmire, formerly at Goldman Sachs, also using the name Bernard Bergemar.

MindGeek has since come under criticism for its business model, leading to the departure of its senior management and a partial loss of access to Visa and Mastercard payment systems.

At the end of 2020, the company found itself on the brink of collapse after Mastercard and Visa banned the use of their cards on Pornhub due to investigations that found illegal content on the platform. The company has denied the allegations of wrongdoing.

Solomon Friedman, a lawyer and co-founder of Canada-based Ethical Capital Partners, said the lawsuits, as well as criticism of MindGeek, stemmed, in his view, from a misunderstanding of how the company protects its content. This was partly due to the secrecy surrounding the previous owners.

Solomon Friedman also stressed that the new owner of MindGeek wants to ensure transparency in the company's business.

31/03/2023

Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard is buying all the retail assets of French oil company TotalEnergies SE in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as 60% of its business in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Quebec-based Couche-Tard, whose brands include Circle K, has been looking for acquisition opportunities in overseas markets for several years.

The deal with TotalEnergies comes at a time when petrol stations in Europe are shifting from selling petrol to turning them into food and service centres.

The European Union bans the sale of petrol for cars in 2035 as part of efforts to achieve zero carbon emissions across the continent.

The deal will help TotalEnergies meet its target of reducing petroleum product sales by 30 per cent by 2030 as part of a plan to cut carbon emissions.

The French company said it plans to place charging stations for electric cars on major roads and in major cities across Europe.

Couche-Tard said it would finance the acquisition with cash, existing credit lines, a commercial paper programme and loans. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

31/03/2023

Siemens Energy announced on Wednesday a capital increase through a private placement to help refinance the €4bn takeover of Siemens subsidiary Gamesa.

The deal aims to raise €1.3bn.

Siemens Energy, which already owned 67% of Siemens Gamesa, submitted a bid for the remaining stake in November.

The offer and sale of the new shares will be made exclusively to institutional investors in the offering.

Citigroup CN and SocGen are the global coordinators of the transaction along with UniCredit's joint bookrunners in cooperation with Kepler Cheuvreux and HSBC.

31/03/2023

T-Mobile US Inc said it would buy Ka'ena Corp, owner of Ryan Reynolds-backed low-cost service provider Mint Mobile, as the telco hopes to maintain growth in a competitive environment.

The deal will give T-Mobile a bigger share of its pay-as-you-go customer base.

It will also provide a boost to T-Mobile's business at a time when promotions by rivals Verizon and AT&T have led to increased churn from its subscribers.

The agreement consists of 39% cash and 61% equity, with the final purchase price to be determined by Ka'ena's performance in certain periods before and after the deal closes, which is expected later this year.

31/03/2023

A subsidiary of New York Community Bancorp has reached an agreement with US regulators to buy deposits and loans from New York-based Signature Bank, which closed a week ago.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said that as part of the deal, a subsidiary of Flagstar Bank would take over virtually all of Signature Bank's deposits, some of its loan portfolios and all 40 of its former branches. The agency said about $60 billion of Signature Bank's loans and $4 billion of its deposits would remain in receivership.

Signature had $110.36 billion in assets.

Under the Signature Bank asset deal, Flagstar will buy back $12.9 billion in loans at a discount of $2.7 billion.

The FDIC estimates the deal will cost its Deposit Insurance Fund about $2.5 billion. The agency previously reported that the fund had $128.2 billion at the end of 2022.

31/03/2023

Saudi Arabia's second-largest bank has raised more than $1.3bn from the sale of some of its real estate loans to a state-owned finance company.

Al Rajhi Bank, the kingdom's largest lender by asset size after the National Bank of Saudi Arabia, sold a portfolio of real estate loans to state-owned Saudi Real Estate Refinance Co.

The deal is the largest of its kind in the country, the state-owned company said in a statement.

SRC, known as Real Estate Refinance Co., expects more banks to sell off some of their mortgage assets as they seek to ease liquidity pressures that have led to borrowing costs approaching record highs.

Saudi Arabia's mortgage market has grown sharply over the past few years, but the rapid growth in mortgage loans has limited the ability to continue lending. Mortgage approvals by banks have slowed over the past year as banks struggled with liquidity shortages and buyers faced steep interest rate hikes and rapidly rising housing costs.

31/03/2023

New York-based startup Via Transportation has announced the acquisition of popular travel planning app Citymapper.

The British app developer Citymapper, founded in 2012, has gained popularity thanks to its clever interface and deep integration into real-time urban transport systems. The app has been used by more than 50 million users in 100 cities.

Citymapper has struggled to make money over the years. In 2021, Citymapper lost £7.4 million on revenues of £5.1 million, according to the latest reports available in UK documents. That same year, the company launched a crowdfunding campaign. According to its website, its investors included Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, Benchmark Capital, Connect Ventures and LocalGlobe .

Meanwhile, Via managed to raise $110m at a valuation of $3.5bn last month in a round led by London-based venture capital firm 83North. The company, which develops software for cities to help commuters find and use public transport, is well placed to leverage the billions of dollars in public infrastructure investment promised by US President Joe Biden's infrastructure plans.

The acquisition will allow Citymapper to expand its audience and make its technology available to cities and transport agencies, its founder and CEO Azmat Yusuf said in a statement.

31/03/2023

San Francisco startup Adept, co-founded by a former OpenAI engineer, has raised $350 million to develop tools that can actually execute commands based on human prompts rather than giving written answers.

Specifically, the fresh funding will go towards supporting the startup's product development, model training and staff augmentation.

OpenAI's ChaGPT, which generates human responses to simple prompts, or Dall-E, which creates images, made a lot of hype around itself not too long ago. A wide range of businesses have struggled to incorporate the technology into their products. But Adept aims to take it a step further by going beyond having AI provide answers to questions by making the software actually perform the task.

According to the company, Adept sees the future of computing where natural language interfaces will help people work more efficiently and productively. Adept creates tools that work "hand-in-hand with the user" in existing programs. Engineers will be able to shift tasks to an automated 'partner' and free up their own time.

31/03/2023

British hedge fund billionaire Michael Platt's 75m superyacht Arrow is one of the most expensive on the market.

The steel and aluminium yacht was built by the Dutch Feadship shipyard and boasts six cabins, a sky lounge with bar, massage parlour, cinema and an extensive 'men's interior'.

The sale of Arrow is part of a swap plan. Financier Michael Platt is working with Feadship on a new 110m yacht.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Platt, 54, is the second richest man in Britain with a fortune of $11.2bn. His BlueCrest Capital Management added a record 153% last year, boosting his fortune by $3bn.

31/03/2023

WPF Holdings, Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of Vezbi Inc. Vezbi shareholders will be issued 10 common shares of WPF Holdings in exchange for 1 common share of Vezbi.

Vezbi is a community-driven super-application designed to organise and connect all aspects of life in one centralised application.

Current features in the app include: tasks, events, messaging, micro-blogs, SnipBits, communities, internal communication, Vezbi marketplace, shop, FAVR and micro-apps.

Vezbi will continue to develop its technology within WFP Holdings (i.e. user verification, rating systems, payments, etc.) with a focus on increasing market share (domestic and international).

WPF Holdings is a technology holding company specialising in new and advanced applications and projects targeting small and medium-sized businesses to enable companies to take full advantage of the opportunities that the digital world offers.

31/03/2023

Shares in Los Angeles-based Pacific Western Bank fell 10 per cent in morning trading, even as the lender tried to allay investor fears by saying it had more than $11.4bn in cash as of 20 March.

PacWest also said it had considered the idea of raising new capital but abandoned the move because of the collapse in bank stocks.

Reuters first reported last week that PacWest was in talks with investment firms, including Atlas SP Partners, about ways to boost its liquidity.

Total deposits at PacWest Bank fell 20% to $27.1bn from $33.9bn as of December 31.

Regional banks, whose shares suffered after the collapse of two lenders in the US this month, have tried to reassure customers that their deposits are safe.

31/03/2023

UK education group Pearson has said it will sell online learning services to POLS to private equity group Regent for a deferred sum payable over several years.

Regent will pay Pearson 27.5 per cent of POLS' adjusted profit each year for six years, plus a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the unit.

Pearson said the sale of its international online software management business is not likely to make a difference to its operating profit in 2023.

In 2022, POLS posted a loss of £26m on revenues of £155m. Pearson announced last year that POLS was subject to a strategic review.

31/03/2023

Liberty Global Plc has offered around €929m to take full control of Belgian telecoms operator Telenet Group Holding NV.

Cable and wireless group Liberty Global Plc has offered €22 in cash for a share in Belgium's largest cable broadband service provider Telenet.

Liberty, which has held a controlling stake in Telenet since 2007, is consolidating in some markets while losing other assets.

The deal comes after Telenet shares fell by around 50% in the last twelve months, bringing its market value to €1.7bn.

Belgium is the fourth largest market for Liberty Global after the UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

31/03/2023

Some 20 Japanese companies, including Orix Corp., Rohm Co. and Chubu Electric Power Co. will participate in the buyout, the Nikkei reported.

Toshiba executives, the Japanese government and most of the company's high-profile foreign shareholders are at odds over the company's future: active investors are seeking to maximize profits, while the government prioritizes keeping sensitive technology and businesses out of the hands of foreigners.

Toshiba's nuclear power business is considered important to national security. It is involved in the decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, which was destroyed by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters in 2011.

If the sale goes through, it will be one of the biggest deals in Asia this year, at a time when deal volumes have fallen sharply. It would also be one of the largest private equity buyouts ever in Japan.

The path to this decision by the board was far from smooth. For example, the JIP-led group has faced hurdles in securing financing, as banks have become more cautious in providing funds for large deals in a less favourable economic environment.

Toshiba has suffered one disaster after another over the past eight years, starting with an accounting scandal in 2015 that wiped out profits and led to a company-wide restructuring.

Based in Tokyo, JIP was founded in 2002 by Hidemi Mowe, who is still the company's chief executive.

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