Mergers & Acquisitions: The Dealmaker's Journal articles from November 2004

Mergers & Acquisitions: The Dealmaker's Journal archives from November 2004

Timing Can Be Everything.(Brief Article)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... The Delaware decision on the Emerging Communications Inc. going-private deal (see MarketWatch on page 16), knee-buckling as it was, not surprisingly fragmented the m&a world into droves of opposing camps. While deals lawyers on one flank...

Will Oracle's Victory Touch Off a Rush of Deals? Federal court decision clears the way for Oracle to continue its pursuit of PeopleSoft, rejects DOJ market definition.(Department of Justice)
November 1, 2004... The much-awaited federal court decision that allowed allow Oracle Corp. to continue its long-running $7.7 billion hostile pursuit of PeopleSoft Inc. raised eyebrows in the antitrust community. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge...

IRS Says Breakup Fee Is Taxable.(Internal Revenue Service)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... A spurned bidder that receives a breakup fee may be well advised to just take the money and move on - without trying some fancy tax tricks to juice up the payment. That is the apparent warning from the IRS, which recently shot down an effort...

Using the Pill To Promote a Deal.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... It's usually the besieged target that rushes to install or toughen a poison pill but an acquirer under fire also may engineer the pill for its own advantage, as demonstrated in September by Mylan Laboratories Inc. Mylan, which ran into...

Top of the news...(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Leading information technology m&a adviser Updata Capital announced a number of appointments and promotions in recent weeks, including the hiring of Heidrick & Struggles' former head of global technology and professional services. ...

M & A Appointments.(Mergers & Acquisitions)
November 1, 2004... American Pharmaceutical Partners - This specialty drug company has named Bruce J. Wendel as VP of corporate development. Previously, he had been at Bristol-Myers Squibb, starting as in-house counsel then shifting to business and corporate...

New Pricing Service Delivers Collaborative Valuations: Since valuation is an inexact science, appraisers working as a group may produce more accurate and substantive prices.(Waterford Advisors LLC)
November 1, 2004... In the summer of 2003, the SEC issued final rules concerning auditor independence under Sarbanes-Oxley, prohibiting accounting firms from providing certain types of services for their audit clients - one being valuations. As a result, public...

EBITDA multiples head back down to earth.(Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... An increasing number of deals with exorbitant multiples of EBITDA, mostly attached to insurance and banking deals, has been showing up in deal data, and has led M&A's staff to review the figures that we publish. After eliminating...

Avoiding the IT Integration Blues.(Information Technology)
November 1, 2004... When dealmakers are trying to knit together a transaction, managing all the details can seem like death by a thousand cuts. But experts insist that deal principals must look beyond financial and other models when evaluating deals and include...

Ruling Demands a Tougher Process for Valuing Targets: Decision in a going-private deal slaps damages on directors,quadruples company value, bolsters board independence standards.(Innovative Communication Corporation)
November 1, 2004... Lowering the boom on an obscure six-year-old going-private transaction, a Delaware judge delivered a stern warning to dealmakers, m&a lawyers, and corporate directors to take a tighter line in valuing and pricing deals or else face harsh...

Halliburton Shakes Up KBR For Possible Disposal: Controversy-torn construction unit is revamped so it can be cut loose without legal reverberations if the parent's P/E doesn't widen.(Price to Earnings)(KBRHalliburton)
November 1, 2004... Is Halliburton Co.'s troubled-plagued KBR subsidiary a corporate version of "dead man walking"? For the next two years or so, the big engineering and construction unit will undergo a structural makeover to streamline operations, cut costs,...

Checking the Legal Health Of Private Company Acquisitions.
November 1, 2004... For two years, financial executives have been inundated with analyses of the corporate governance and public reporting requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and related corporate governance reforms. More recently, they have been...

An Insurance Prescription For the Buyer's Environmental Fears.
November 1, 2004... As the M&A market gained momentum across multiple industrial sectors in 2004, the environmental insurance market experienced a major increase in demand as buyers and sellers sought solutions to environmental-related deal impediments. The...

BBVA Crosses the Border To Court U.S. Latinos: The Spanish banking giant wants a piece of the action inserving the growing, underserved Hispanic market.(Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria S.A.)
November 1, 2004... A number of American financial institutions have long been aware of the special financial services needs of the U.S. Latino community, and for years have been catering to this promising market. Marketing products to this fastest-growing...

Health Database to Be A Rallying Point for M&A: Technology, health care, and information players are seenlinking up to reap payoffs in the "sea change" project.(Mergers & Acquisitions)
November 1, 2004... By the middle of the next decade the government hopes to have in operation a massive database housing the medical histories of all Americans. Completion of the project will require years of development and data collection, billions of...

Chemed Shifts Its Focus to End-of-Life Care: Owner of the largest hospice firm sees expansion opportunities in the growing field.(Chemed Corp.)
November 1, 2004... Hospice care and plumbing services provider Chemed Corp. likes to think of itself as an "opportunistic investor that follows the trail of opportunity," says David Williams, the company's VP and CFO. Over the years, that trail has led the...