#mergers--acquisitions

#mergers--acquisitions

Blue-blooded fund manager Schroders is set to be sold to American rival Nuveen in a £9.9bn deal that will end more than two centuries of independence and deliver another setback to the London Stock Exchange. Nuveen, part of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), has agreed to acquire Schroders for 612p per share - a 34 per cent premium to the firm's closing price of 456p. The transaction will create one of the world's largest asset managers, overseeing around $2.5tn (£1.8tn) in assets.

Netflix's $82.7 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is facing significant new resistance. Investment group Ancora Holdings announced it has purchased $200 million in WBD shares and opposes Netflix's offer. Instead, Ancora is throwing its support behind a rival bid from Paramount. The WSJ had the exclusive. In a press release on Wednesday, Ancora aligned itself with Paramount's arguments: it claims the Netflix deal is inferior, involves more regulatory risk, and doesn't deliver as much immediate cash to shareholders.

You may recall LiquidStack was one of the early players in two-phase immersion cooling, and first dunked servers into tanks of dielectric liquids to cool down crypto mining operations. Microsoft was among the first to trial LiquidStack's tech all the way back in 2021. Since then, the company has expanded its portfolio to include both single-phase and dual-phase immersion tanks, plus direct-to-chip cooling technologies, including a rather beefy 10MW modular coolant distribution unit (CDU).

The complaint alleges the company failed to disclose in its registration statement the identity of an unnamed financial adviser engaged in December 2024 and early 2025, along with any related fees. It also claims Two Harbors did not specify the services tied to $2.5 million in fees paid to Houlihan Lokey, which allegedly omitted projections and implied valuation assumptions in its fairness analysis of the deal.

Genius Sports announced the $1.2 billion acquisition of Legend on February 5, with $900 million paid out at closing and an earnout of up to $300 million. The big-figure deal is anticipated to bring in $1.1 billion in Group Revenue for Genius Sports, as well as between $320 and $330 million in Group Adjusted EBITDA with approximately 50% free cash flow.

Markets were also bruised as a planned €220bn tie-up between mining giants Glencore and Rio Tinto was shelved. The pair have had a long-running, on-off engagement that has seen them try to tie the knot before. "Many wondered whether it might be third time lucky when Rio Tinto and Glencore got back around the table to discuss a deal which would have created the world's biggest mining company - but today it emerged it was not to be,"

I certainly feel like Long & Foster is a larger version of Latter & Blum, Conway says in an exclusive interview with HousingWire. There is a lot of familiarity with it being this iconic company with a lot of history, tradition and legacy. I think I am in a unique position to honor that legacy and help them go forward.

U.S. shale producer Devon Energy will acquire Coterra Energy for nearly $26 billion in a combination that creates a domestic oil and gas juggernaut trailing only household names Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips in sheer production volumes, the companies announced Feb. 2. After a couple of years of rapid consolidation in the energy sector, dealmaking slowed down dramatically last year as oil prices fell when OPEC ramped up its output and the Trump administration implemented a series of tariffs worldwide.

Builders FirstSource, the largest American supplier of structural building products, quietly acquired the assets of Pennsylvania-based Pleasant Valley Homes, a wholesale manufacturer of modular homes. Lori Conrad, Senior Director of Corporate Communications for Builders FirstSource, confirmed to The Builder's Daily that the company acquired Pleasant Valley Homes' assets in November at an undisclosed price. Pleasant Valley Homes has sales of about 400 homes per year, according to Conrad, and operates in ten states in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, from Virginia to Maine.

Democratic members of the US Congress, as part of the Congressional Labor Caucus, penned a letter asking the Federal Trade Commission to "thoroughly review" the $55 billion acquisition of EA. EA confirmed the sale to the Public Investment Fund, or the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners in September, but the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027. Before the official change of ownership, the 46 House Democrats who signed the letter to the FTC are calling for more scrutiny into the impacts of the deal.

Speaking on the Goldman Sachs Exchanges podcast on Jan. 20, ahead of his trip to Davos, Solomon described a business landscape defined by a sharp dichotomy. On one side, the macroeconomic setup for 2026 is "pretty good for risk assets and for markets," fueled by a "confluence of very stimulative actions," including monetary easing and a massive capital investment boom in AI infrastructure. On the other, executives are grappling with anxiety about inconsistent policymaking and geopolitical "noise."

The Mumbai-headquartered agency group, which combines Marching Ants Advertising and Trigger Happy Entertainment (MA&TH), following a merger of the two operations in 2019, provides content creation services for clients such as film distributors, over-the-top (OTT) providers, producers, film production studios, broadcast companies and international brands. The Drum spoke with Hakuhodo's general manager for international business strategy Yasutoshi Hiratsuka to learn more about the group's growth plans in India and across Asia.

Nathan's Famous, which opened as a 5-cent hot dog stand in Coney Island more than a century ago, has been sold to packaged meat giant Smithfield Foods in an all-cash $450 million deal, the companies announced Wednesday. Smithfield, which has held rights to produce and sell Nathan's products in the U.S. and Canada and at Sam's Clubs in Mexico since 2014, will acquire all of Nathan's outstanding shares for $102 each.

By late 2024, Reffkin was blunt about what he sees as Compass's core asset: listing inventory. Listing inventory remains the lifeblood of the residential real estate marketplace, he said, arguing that Compass already has a depth of inventory in many of our local markets that is unmatched. That statement matters because it reveals the company's North Star not merely recruiting or revenue, but the control point Compass believes can reshape consumer behavior and, potentially, the real estate industry.

As per the press release, the TCL-led venture will "leverage Sony's high-quality picture and audio technology, brand value and operational expertise" combined with "TCL's advanced display technology, global scale advantages, industrial footprint, end-to-end cost efficiency". Furthermore, the products will still carry Sony and Bravia branding. The new joint venture is set to operate globally, with the binding agreement set to be finalized by the end of March.

"cleaning up"

Along with the WBD shareholders, we have asked for the customary financial disclosure a board is supposed to provide shareholders when making an investment recommendation...WBD has failed to include any disclosure about how it valued the overall Netflix transaction, how the purchase price reduction for debt works in the Netflix transaction, or even what the basis is for its 'risk adjustment' of our $30 per share all-cash offer. WBD shareholders need this information to make an informed investment decision on our offer,

Paramount is suing WBD for more information, including how it's valuing its cable networks, "so that WBD shareholders have what they need to be able to make an informed decision as to whether to tender their shares into our offer," Paramount said in a letter to WBD shareholders on Monday morning.