"Live well for less about the same"

Ooh the delicious irony of it:

BBC 22 December 2000:

Supermarket chain Sainsbury's has sold its Homebase DIY chain in a two-fold deal worth £969m. The arrangement will see its chain of stores sold to venture capitalist Schroder Ventures for £750m.

A further 28 sites, which were intended to house new Homebase stores, are being sold to Kingfisher, owner of DIY rival B&Q, for £219m...

Guardian 5 January 2016:

Sainsbury’s has made a £1bn move to buy Home Retail Group, the owner of Argos and Homebase, as it seeks to strengthen its business against the rise of the discounters and Amazon.

The supermarket group said it had made an approach to Home Retail in November, but its proposal was rejected last month...

For more of this pointless hilarity, see BT trying (but failing) to buy back O2:

BT (BT.L) has entered exclusive talks with the owners of EE for a potential 12.5 billion-pound acquisition deal to give the former UK state telecoms firm the top position in mobile as well as fixed line broadband services.

BT had been in competing talks with both the Spanish group Telefonica's (TEF.MC) rival mobile firm O2 and EE's owners, Orange (ORAN.PA) and Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), putting the 168-year-old fixed line firm in a strong position in negotiating for a return to the consumer mobile market after 13 years away...

A deal with Telefonica would have returned O2 to its original owner, as it was demerged from a heavily indebted BT via a share flotation in 2001 and subsequently bought by Telefonica in early 2006.

U- and Z-Turns Of The Day

U-Turn

From the BBC:

Telecoms giant BT is in talks with Telefonica about buying the O2 mobile network from the Spanish firm...

The irony is...

In 2002, BT spun off O2, then called BT Cellnet. In 2005 it was acquired by Spain's Telefonica for £17.7bn.

Taking irony to the next level...

[O2's] value is around half that paid by Telefonica. Deutsche Bank values O2 UK at £9bn, while UBS values it at £9.6bn.

Z-Turn

From the FT:

Germany has made a dramatic appeal to Sweden to help it out of an energy dilemma that threatens Europe’s biggest economy as it shifts away from nuclear power and fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Oops, caught with their trousers down after they overreacted to the Fukushima meltdown.

And what does the German government want 'Sweden' to do..?

Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor, warned Sweden’s new prime minister Stefan Löfven last month that there would be “serious consequences” for electricity supplies and jobs if Sweden’s state-owned utility Vattenfall ditched plans to expand two coal mines in the northeast of Germany.

I'm not sure what level of irony we're on here. Waving the Greenie flag, the Germans want to go from nuclear to renewables... but first they're taking the retrograde step back to coal, and the coal which they want to use was theirs anyway before they sold it off to foreigners.

Squaring the circle, we get this...

Angela Merkel’s cabinet is due to meet next week to discuss mothballing some coal-fired power stations as a means of helping the country reach its carbon goals.

But Berlin’s lobbying of Stockholm underlines a view held by some in the German government that coal-fired generation is vital to the security of the country’s power supply.

Finbarr Saunders is now working for City AM

From today's City AM (print edition page 3):

Turkish delight as Yilsiz swallows United in record deal

Turkish food and drinks giant Yildiz won the bidding war for United Biscuits yesterday, offering more than £2bn for the firm and beating off stiff competition from Kellogg’s and Burton’s Biscuits.

In case you don't know who Finbarr Saunders is...

Pfizer/Asthma Zeneca - more splendid Indian Bicycle Marketing...

... with a bit of Pork Barrel for luck. From yesterday's Evening Standard:

Boris Johnson today said ministers should be certain that London's science industry would not suffer before backing Pfizer's £63 billion takeover bid for AstraZeneca.

The Mayor said politicians could not be "aloof" from the deal, which the British company has so far resisted.

In particular, he argued that the Government should ensure that UK research and development received funding to cement its world-class status.

From this morning's City AM:

CHANCELLOR George Osborne yesterday launched a scathing attack on Labour's track record, in an increasingly bitter political row over the proposed takeover of UK drugs giant Astrazeneca.

Using language that flirted closely with protectionism, which he has so far avoided, Osborne attacked Labour's free trade approach to foreign takeovers during its 13 years in office. When in power, Labour allowed Kraft's takeover of Cadbury.

"We'll take no lectures from the last government that virtually destroyed the British economy, and time after again, when there were takeovers, did nothing to protect Britain's national economic interest," he said.

It follows Labour's criticism that Prime Minister David Cameron was acting as a "cheerleader" for Pfizer's controversial takeover bid.

Astra Zeneca Merger

From the Telegraph

One of the lessons from the banking crisis is that when one of these deals comes along that the boss of a giant firm says must be done, or else we are all doomed beyond doubt, it is well worth saying: "Hold on a minute. We've got some questions you must answer."

Senior capitalists who cannot see this are, once again, doing the work of the resurgent anti-capitalists. The biggest risk to capitalism is posed, unintentionally, by some of its own leaders and their supporters who argue that if a deal can be done then it must always be done, hang the consequences and you must be a communist if you are sceptical about the wisdom of institutional investors or ever consider the public interest.

The problem with Iain Martin's article is that while there were some bad mergers and acquisitions, it wasn't mergers and acquisitions that created the lending crisis. Northern Rock managed to collapse without doing a single merger after demutualistion. And while there were were 16 UK clearing banks in 1960 and 5 in 2010, it's also the case that there were only 5 in the mid 1980s.

And what no-one has been able to explain is what the "public interest" is regarding the Pfizer/Astra Zeneca takeover. What's the worst case? Pfizer move all the jobs to America? So, I get the next cancer or erectile dysfunction drug designed by people who say sidewalk instead of pavement? Sorry, but so fucking what?

"Labour: We need to grill Big Farmer chiefs"

From City AM:

THE LABOUR party is demanding that the bosses of Tate & Lyle and Meadow Foods, who between them receive nearly £1 billion in CAP subsidies each year are called in front of a Westminster select committee and questioned over the proposed multi-billion agriculturals mega-merger.

A political row has escalated around Tate & Lyle's bids, with opposition leader Ed Miliband proposing an additional public interest test to determine if this deal, and future acquisitions, are in the national economic interest.

Miliband has accused the coalition government of "cheerleading" in support of sugar giant Tate & Lyle. Its advances on Meadow Foods, which supplies 500 million litres of milk per year in the UK, have so far been rebuffed.

AstraZeneca: Some more splendid Indian Bicycle Marketing

From the BBC, 2 May 2014:

Conservative peer Lord Heseltine has said the government should have greater powers to intervene when British companies are the target of takeover bids by foreign businesses.

The former deputy prime minister told the BBC takeovers "could be very helpful", but the UK should do more to protect its national interests. This week, American drugs giant Pfizer announced it was bidding for British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca...

From the BBC, 4 May 2014:

Ed Miliband has called for an inquiry into whether the US drugs firm Pfizer's planned takeover of AstraZeneca is in the UK's national interest.

The Labour leader has written to the PM to urge a stronger public interest test for takeovers of important businesses.

No 10 has denied Labour claims it is acting as a "cheerleader" for the deal, saying it is fighting for British jobs and British science.

From the BBC, 4 May 2014:

The Conservative Party Chairman Grant Shapps has said tests are in place to make sure that any takeover of AstraZeneca by Pfizer is in the public interest.

His comments come after Ed Miliband wrote to the prime minister calling for an inquiry and for a stronger public interest test for takeovers of important businesses.

Mr Shapps told the Sunday Politics that Labour's approach was "anti-business".

Is there actually a scintilla of difference between what Heseltine says and what Miliband says; or between the Conservatives' proposed "public interest test" and Labour's proposed "public interest test"?

Probably not, but nonetheless, Shappsy dutifully slags of Ed Miliband as being anti-business. Ed is quite happy about this, because it sends a message to potential Labour voters.

Presumably, it has been agreed that Heseltine might be a bit of an old fuddy-duddy but a true patriot at heart.

It has probably also been agreed that Labour will go on to accuse the Tories of kow-towing to large business interests at the expense of skilled employees in this country, or something.