Focus Media Holding Ltd (分眾傳媒), a Chinese advertising company targeted by short-seller Carson Block, received a bid from private-equity firms, including Carlyle Group LP, in what would be the country’s largest leveraged buyout.
The bidders made a “non-binding” offer of US$27 for each American depositary receipts (ADR), the Shanghai-based company said on Monday in a statement. The offer is 15 percent more than Focus’ closing price on Friday and above the level when Block’s Muddy Waters LLC began targeting it in November.
The bidders, which include Citic Capital Partners (中信資本) and Focus Media chief executive officer Jason Nanchun Jiang (江南春), made the proposal that values the company at US$3.5 billion. A successful deal would see the advertising group join Chinese companies such as Fushi Copperweld Inc (傅氏國際) and Winner Medical Group Inc (穩健醫療) in backing moves to go private after short sellers raised accounting and corporate governance concerns.
The offer “is another example of how Chinese are taking more and more of their companies private,” Sachin Shah, a Jersey City, New Jersey-based special-situations and merger-arbitrage strategist at Tullett Prebon PLC, said by telephone. “The US market isn’t properly valuing them and doesn’t know if the offer price is right, allowing the management of the companies to possibly win in getting the assets at lower valuations.”
Focus Media’s ADR climbed 8.9 percent to US$25.45 on Monday after jumping 7.6 percent on Friday. The company has about 129.3 million ADRs outstanding.
Focus Media’s bullish options trading jumped to the highest level since November on Friday. More than 29,000 calls to buy the stock changed hands, five times the four-week average, compared with 7,635 for puts to sell.
Focus Media traded at US$25.50 on Nov. 18. last year, before Muddy Waters recommended betting against the stock. The stock plunged as much as 66 percent the next trading day after Block’s firm issued a strong sell recommendation. Muddy Waters in February issued a fifth report that said Focus Media overstated its ad network.
In addition to Citic Capital and Washington-based Carlyle, the bidders for Focus Media include FountainVest Partners (方源資本), CDH Investments (鼎暉投資) and China Everbright Ltd (光大控股), the company said in the statement. Jiang is Focus Media’s biggest shareholder with a stake of about 18 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Focus Media is very dominant in the public-display advertising space in China and has geographically diversified itself throughout China’s big cities,” said Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group LLC, a New York-based firm that sold its stake in the company a year ago. “The PE [private-equity] firms are seeing a bargain here.”
“The company’s board of directors has formed a committee of independent directors to consider the proposed transaction,” Focus Media said in the statement.
The investor group plans to use a combination of debt and equity to finance the purchase.
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday received government approval to deploy its advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process at its second fab currently under construction in Japan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a news release. The ministry green-lit the plan for the facility in Kumamoto, which is scheduled to start installing equipment and come online in 2028 with a monthly production capacity of 15,000 12-inch wafers, the ministry said. The Department of Investment Review in June 2024 authorized a US$5.26 billion investment for the facility, slated to manufacture 6- to 12nm chips, significantly less advanced than 3nm process. At a meeting with
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Standard Chartered Taiwan on March 26 announced that it has partnered with international fintech firm FinIQ to build an “Automated Structured Products Pricing Platform.” The bank is also introducing products from global issuers including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Barclays PLC and BNP Paribas SA. The new platform enables an end-to-end process whereby it finds the most competitive pricing across multiple issuers in a matter of minutes, followed by automated documentation and transaction execution, which significantly shortens time-to-market and delivers a superior wealth management experience. Standard Chartered Bank Taiwan CEO Anthony Yu (游天立) said: “Standard Chartered is increasingly leveraging its wealth management
RSS