| KKR Drops Out of Sainsbury Bidding Group, People Familiar Say
April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. dropped out of the bidding group for J Sainsbury Plc because of its involvement in a takeover offer for U.K. retailer Alliance Boots Plc, two people with knowledge of the deal said. KKR's withdrawal won't jeopardize the planned bid for the U.K. supermarket chain, according to the people, who declined to be identified as details aren't public. CVC Capital Partners Ltd., Blackstone Group LP and Texas Pacific Group make up the rest of the group, which must decide on a bid by April 13. ``I don't think there will be a problem for them to fill KKR's slot,'' said Chris Gower, an analyst at Man Securities in London. ``There are plenty of other parties interested in getting involved in this, if the numbers work.'' New York-based KKR and Italian billionaire Stefano Pessina raised their bid for Alliance Boots to 10.1 billion pounds ($19.8 billion) last month, and the owner of the U.K.'s largest drugstore chain indicated it may discuss a transaction.
EBay posts better than expected profits
EBay Inc posted better than expected profits in the first quarter as several of its newer businesses compensated for disappointing results in its mainstay auction service. The faster-growing units include shopping.com, a price comparison site; some classified listing sites; a service to let online merchants accept credit cards; and Skype, the online voice chat service. "We are on track with our well-crafted portfolio," Meg Whitman, eBay's chief executive, said in an interview after the earnings report was published by the firm on Wednesday. The results sent eBay's stock up about 3 percent in after-hours trading. Overall, the company earned US$377 million in the first quarter, up 52 percent from a year earlier. Excluding charges related to stock-based compensation and some other items, the company earned US$0.33 a share, above the US$0.29 average that analysts had predicted.
Lehman Bros confident it will prevail
Lehman Brothers is confident that it will be exonerated from charges of colluding to evade tax by citing official guidelines allowing it to set up Global Thai Property Fund. The US financial house yesterday met with the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to submit documentary evidence, a source said. The package included the directive from the Financial Sector Restructuring Authority (FRA) giving winners of auctions for the assets of the now-defunct 56 finance companies a month to establish a property fund to manage the assets, he said. The DSI will contact Lehman Brothers about its decision at the beginning of June, he said. Lehman Brothers had signed a purchase agreement with the FRA within seven days of winning the bidding, as required by the FRA, the source added.
Bidding war for La Tasca
A multi-million pound bidding war has broken out for La Tasca, the Bolton-based Spanish themed restaurant chain. After yesterday's announcement that the board of La Tasca had recommended an offer of 185p per share from the Tragus Group, owner of the Cafe Rouge and Bella Italia restaurant chains, Kaupthing, the Icelandic bank working in tandem with Robert Tchenguiz's R20 investment vehicle, has announced that it is to offer 188p a share for the company. The new offer values La Tasca at £98.6 million. .
Super Hot Blog Domain Names BlogScoop.com and BlogSpeed.com are ...
Las Vegas, NV -- Apr 13, 2007 -- /prbuzz/ -- Domain names based on two of the hottest Blog terms in the world are being auctioned on eBay this week. BlogScoop.com and BlogSpeed.com are both up for auction this week on eBay, and both are expected to get quite a bit of attention. BlogScoop commonly refers to the first occurrence of a story in the blogosphere. BlogSpeed commonly refers to the speed at which news and information travel in the blogosphere. "Blogs represent the future of how news and information will be distributed", said Jacob Anderson, Marketing Director for NameRSS.com, "The owners of these domains will have a phenomenal platform on which to affect the future of information delivery, and there is great value in that. For example, the domain Blogster.com recently sold for $275,000.
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