NASDAQ OMX Group Inc held preliminary talks with Carlyle Group LP about going private before the discussions broke down on price, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The talks were initiated by Carlyle chief financial officer Adena Friedman, who left NASDAQ in 2011 as chief financial officer and head of corporate strategy, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the meetings were private.
NASDAQ surged 3.6 percent to a four-year high of US$30.53 at 1:25pm in New York on Monday. The shares gained as much as 9.1 percent, the biggest intraday advance since August 2011.
“Why NASDAQ sells is because it creates shareholder value,” Rich Repetto, an exchange analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP in New York, said in a phone interview. “If they could sell it at US$35 or US$40, I think they’d be pretty happy ... If they can sell and create more value than what they think they can by just operating organically, then it’s the board’s duty to look at those options.”
NASDAQ OMX spokesman Rob Madden declined to comment, saying the company does not speak about “rumors or speculation.” Carlyle’s spokesman Randy Whitestone also declined to comment. The talks were reported earlier by Fox Business Network.
NASDAQ chief executive officer Robert Greifeld is reorganizing business units and reducing expenses as revenue from trading shrinks around the world. The exchange is expanding into derivatives, setting up a new London-based market and buying a 25 percent stake in a Dutch alternative trading system focused on stocks and equity derivatives.
The company reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates on Jan. 31 after cutting costs. Profit in the three months ended Dec. 31 jumped to US$85 million, or US$0.50 a share, from US$82 million, or US$0.45, in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day