Word: mergers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...networking application in 2000 to sell EMusic, he might have made an extra $30 million on the deal. At the time, Universal head Edgar Bronfman Jr. had shown interest in purchasing EMusic, a digital-music distribution company then valued at $60 million, but was distracted by his company's merger with Vivendi. It took Brydon four months of searching to realize he had another entree into Universal: an EMusic board member who knew Universal Music president Doug Morris. Once an introduction was secured, they quickly struck a deal for $24 million. But during the time that Brydon overlooked the connection...
...MTFG currently looks like it will win the merger fight. At an Aug. 12 press conference, executives from MTFG and UFJ announced that they had agreed to consolidate, a pairing that would create the world's largest bank, with assets of $1.7 trillion, outstripping U.S.-based Citigroup and Japan's Mizuho Holdings. But Yoshifumi Nishikawa, SMFG's iconoclastic CEO, has refused to bow out gracefully. Shortly after MTFG's deal was announced, he offered to merge with UFJ in a one-for-one stock swap valued at $29 billion?a generous 30% premium to UFJ's average market value over...
...Considering the problems that plague UFJ, it's difficult to see why it is being courted so ardently. Formed three years ago through the merger of three ailing banks, UFJ Holdings has yet to turn an annual profit, losing $3.6 billion last year alone. It's carrying $42 billion in bad loans on its books and without assistance will probably be unable to comply with a government order to cut that amount by half within the next seven months. Worse yet, the winning bidder will be acquiring a bank at which some executives could face criminal charges for hiding information...
...Indeed, ripples from the blockbuster bank merger are already reaching Japan's sclerotic retailers. To spruce up its balance sheets for the deal, UFJ is getting tough on a borrower, the ailing supermarket giant Daiei?one of the country's biggest "zombie" companies, enterprises that continue to operate despite crushing debt and chronic unprofitability. Daiei is carrying debt of nearly $10 billion. It has little hope of ever repaying, but it has always managed to convince a trio of lenders?UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and Mizuho Holdings?to extend additional credit at crucial moments in order to keep it alive...
...Regardless of who wins, the UFJ merger and Daiei restructuring are being hailed as progress for the Japanese economy. Even if the creation of the world's biggest bank proves as impractical and unprofitable as megamergers often turn out to be, it's likely to yield some fortuitous by-products: the disappearance of both Japan's worst basket-case bank and its most notorious corporate zombie. It also sets a strong precedent for increasingly open, shareholder-oriented corporate takeovers. By deviating so spectacularly from the Kabuki script that has governed corporate mergers for decades, the heads of Japan's largest...