News

Boston Scientific to buy Apollo Endosurgery for $417 million

Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX.N) said on Tuesday it will buy medical technology firm Apollo Endosurgery Inc (APEN.O) for $417 million to expand its portfolio of gastric devices. With debt, the deal is valued at about $615 million.

The offer of $10 per share in cash for Apollo Endosurgery represents a premium of nearly 67% to the stock's last close. Its shares were up 63% in premarket trading.

Apollo Endosurgery makes devices used in surgeries to manage gastrointestinal complications and aid in weight loss for patients suffering from obesity. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2023.

 /Source:Reuters/

Merck to buy Imago for $1.35 bln to broaden portfolio of blood disorder drugs

The $36/share cash offer of Imago represents almost a 107% premium to the last close of trading. With Keytruda's key cancer immunotherapy patents expected to be lost in 2028, Merck is trying to expand its drug portfolio. Last year it bought Acceleron Pharma for about $11.5 billion to gain access to an experimental therapy for high blood pressure.

According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Zygerman, the perceived potential revenue from the Imago deal is probably not enough to make up for the loss of exclusivity Keytruda left at the end of this decade.

Zygerman expects the company to close more deals that will help fill the revenue gap due to the loss of the Keytruda patent. Imago, a bone marrow drug company, is currently testing its flagship drug in interim studies to treat some rare blood cancers. Merck did not provide details on the impact of the Imago deal ...

Canada's Enbridge buys U.S. green power firm Tri Global

Sept 29 (Reuters) - Canadian energy infrastructure firm Enbridge Inc  on Thursday said it has acquired U.S.-based renewable energy developer Tri Global Energy for $270 million and assumed its debt. Dallas-based TGE is the third-largest onshore wind developer in the United States, and has monetized more than 6 gigawatts (GW) of utility scale solar and wind projects since its inception in 2009. Calgary-based Enbridge said TGE's debt amount to $17 million and it could make up to about $50 million in additional payments as TGE completes certain projects. The all-cash deal strengthens Enbridge's renewables portfolio, with also includes offshore wind farms in Europe and solar projects supplying power to its oil and gas pipelines in North America. Enbridge is best known for its network of pipelines that ship the bulk of Canadian crude to the United States, but the company said it is focused on growing its renewables portfolio, which ...

Axios Agrees to Sell Itself to Cox Enterprises for $525 Million

Axios, the digital media company that quickly gained traction since its founding five years ago with its distinctive bulletin-style scoops on the realms of politics, business and technology, said on Moday that it had agreed to sell itself to Cox Enterprises.

The deal, which is set to close this month, values Axios at $525 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deal.

The deal is structured so that the company’s three founders — Jim VandeHei, the chief executive; Roy Schwartz, the president; and Mike Allen, a journalist — have financial incentives to stay at the company. Each will be a minority shareholder and will continue to make day-to-day newsroom and business decisions. Alex Taylor, the chief executive and chairman of Cox Enterprises, will join the Axios board.

Axios became a Beltway media fixture shortly after it was founded in 2017, with readers devouring stories about President Donald J. Trump and his ...

IPOs on mainland hit a record high of $58B

Since January there have been five IPOs of above $1 billion on Chinese mainland, and one more is on its way. Meanwhile, there was just one such sale each in New York and Hong Kong, and none in London.

Chinese mainland's IPO market has defied headwinds such as rising interest rates and fears of a US recession, which have brought major equity fundraising elsewhere to a virtual standstill, Bloomberg said.

With companies rushing to list, Chinese mainland's share in global IPO proceeds has more than tripled to 44 percent this year from 13 percent at the end of 2021, according to Bloomberg's data.

Newly traded stocks also showed better performance, with shares of Chinese mainland IPOs up by an average 43 percent this year over their listing price, compared with a 13 percent drop in Hong Kong.

Overall, the tech sector has been one of the busiest for new share sales. For example, demand ...

Uber Dilutes 7.8% Stake at Zomato for $392 Million in Block Deal

Uber Technologies on August 3, Wednesday, sold its 7.8 per cent stake in food delivery aggregator Zomato via a big block deal on stock exchanges, a report said. The deal by Uber was executed at a value of $392 million, the report said.

As per a report by Reuters quoting two people familiar with the deal, the Zomato block deal was executed at 50.44 rupees per share. This comes a day after it was reported that ride-hailing firm Uber will sell its stake of at least 612 shares at Zomato. However, neither Uber nor Zomato issued a statement regarding the development till the time of writing this article.

“As per Reuters calculations, the stake sale by Uber was worth Rs 30.87 billion ($392 million)," said the report. One of the persons cited above said the stake was bought by around 20 global and Indian funds, including Fidelity, Franklin Templeton and India’s ICICI ...

Tesla Sold About 75% of Its Bitcoin to Add $936 Million to Balance Sheet

Tesla Inc. said a Bitcoin impairment affected its second-quarter earnings and that it has converted about 75% of its Bitcoin purchases into fiat currency.

The conversions added $936 million of cash to the balance sheet, Tesla said in its earnings statement Wednesday. The automaker didn’t specify the size of the impairment. Bloomberg Intelligence said July 15 that the quarterly results could include a Bitcoin-related charge of about $740 million.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed interest in Bitcoin and Dogecoin and at one point allowed customers to buy the company’s electric cars with Bitcoin. It later suspended the Bitcoin payment option citing environmental concerns about Bitcoin mining.

/Source:Bloomberg/

Top tech deal maker warns China’s venture capital winter is far from over

Chinese start-ups will struggle to attract investment throughout 2022 and possibly beyond, one of the country’s most successful deal makers said, adding to a chorus of warnings about a reckoning for global tech firms after years of easy money.

Investors in private equity and venture capital funds, known as limited partners, are becoming a lot more selective before committing capital, Bao Fan, founder of China Renaissance Holdings, told Bloomberg News in Hong Kong. The industry may be witnessing the start of a longer-term shift in the geography and type of investor, as American and risk-averse backers begin to cool on China, he said in an interview.

The former Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse banker should know. He has had his finger on the pulse of China’s tech and VC ecosystem over the past two decades, having been an early investor in big names like Didi Global and Meituan as well as a ...

London Stock Exchange suspends trading in 27 firms with strong links to Russia

The London Stock Exchange has suspended trading in 27 companies with strong links to Russia, including the energy and banking firms Gazprom and Sberbank

The LSE said it was moving to block trading in the companies that include Severstal, Russia’s largest steel and mining company run by Alexei Mordashov, the country’s richest man.

Also barred are the aluminium company EN+, whose owners include the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, state-controlled Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, Rosneft and VK, the parent company of social networking sites including VKontakte, which is bigger than Facebook in Russia.

The list also includes the fertiliser company PhosAgro, which is chaired by former LSE chief Xavier Rolet and has shareholders including the billionaire Andrei Guriev, who owns Witanhurst in London’s Highgate, the largest private house in the capital and second in size only to Buckingham Palace.

Also barred are the energy firm Lukoil, Russia’s largest gold producer Polyus, which is controlled ...

Chip maker Broadcom ready to buy cloud computing leader VMware for $50 billion

According to the Financial Times, U.S. chip maker Broadcom is in talks to buy software developer VMware.

The agreement will turn the chip maker into a diversified technology company operating in various fields: from chips to cloud computing.

As the Financial Times notes, the deal will also benefit billionaire Michael Dell financially. His company, Dell, acquired VMware in 2016 as part of a $67 billion takeover agreement with technology conglomerate EMC. Michael Dell now owns about 36% of VMware’s outstanding shares, which were worth about $15 billion at the close of trading on May 20.

VMware is considered one of the most important companies in the cloud computing industry. The company’s services are used by large corporations to manage private and public cloud networks as well as data centers. However, the company’s stock has collapsed badly in recent years, making it a takeover target.

/Source: N-shore Of Long Island/