Deal roundup, 2.26.15

  • Grupo BTG Pactual SA’s private-equity unit and its partners plan to buy the shares they do not already own of Brazilian commercial real estate company BR Properties SA, offering minority shareholders a 17 percent premium for their shares.

 

  • Italy has sold a 5.7 percent stake in utility Enel for 2.2 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in one of Europe’s biggest share placings this year.

 

  • Telecoms group Altice has offered concessions in an effort to gain European Union antitrust approval for its 7.4 billion euro ($8.3 billion) bid for the Portuguese assets of Brazil’s Grupo Oi, the European Commission said.

 

  • Cast & Crew Entertainment Services LLC, a private equity-owned company that helps make sure that everyone in Hollywood movie and television crews, from actors to cameramen, gets paid, is exploring a sale, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

  • French real estate services firm Foncia is seeking 270 million euros ($302.8 million) of extra loans to back Bridgepoint and Eurazeo’s acquisition of a remaining stake in the business they do not already own, banking sources said.

 

  • EU antitrust regulators have warned Orange that its bid for Jazztel may hurt competition, sources said, putting pressure on the French telecoms provider to offer concessions or see the 3.4-billion-euro ($3.8 billion) deal quashed.

 

  • Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne has increased his voting stake in the carmaker to nearly 1 percent after benefiting from a stock grant plan, just as the company readies to spin off luxury brand Ferrari.

 

  • Kyrgyzstan’s parliament turned up the pressure on Centerra Gold, threatening to nationalise the Canadian company’s Kumtor gold mine unless it agrees within a month to a proposed joint venture.

 

  • Barnes & Noble Inc said it would spin off its college books unit and keep its Nook tablets and e-book business, instead of spinning off a combination of the two.

 

  • European investment fund Star Capital is launching preparations for a sale of German cable group Pepcom as well as of a stake in Eleclink, a company running a power cable connecting Britain and France, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

 

  • Greece’s leading banks are considering offloading part of their portfolios of shipping debt worth billions of dollars in a bid to shore up their capital, according to banking and ship financing sources.

 

  • Spanish utility Iberdrola SA will buy UIL Holdings Corp for about $3 billion to create a new listed power and electric utility and expand in the United States, where it hopes to offset falling profits at home.

 

  • Mizuho Financial Group Inc has agreed to buy Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s U.S. and Canadian loan commitments in a deal worth $3 billion, marking the latest move overseas by one of Japan’s top banks.

 

  • U.S-based medical device maker Cyberonics Inc has agreed to buy Sorin SpA in an all-stock deal that the Italian company said valued it at about $1.4 billion.

 

  • U.S. private equity fund TPG Capital Management will buy a “significant minority stake” in Indian private hospital operator Manipal Health Enterprises Ltd for 9 billion rupees ($145.9 million), the companies said in a joint statement.

 

  • Afghanistan is in talks with the International Monetary Fund on a new plan to privatize its loss-making New Kabul Bank after two prior attempts failed to find a suitable buyer, the treasury chief told Reuters.

 

  • Bayer AG’s chief executive said the drugmaker would have to consider any attractive takeover offer for the MaterialScience unit, which Bayer plans to list on the stock exchange, but he signaled that jobs security would be taken into account.

 

  • Philippines President Benigno Aquino may soon sign an order clearing the way for the government to sell a controlling stake in state-owned United Coconut Planters Bank this year, a senior government official said.

 

  • Italian fashion house Roberto Cavalli said it was confident talks with private equity firm Clessidra for the sale of a majority stake in the Florentine group could be finalised as scheduled.

 

  • Italian motorway operator Atlantia SpA said it had reached an accord to buy a further 75 percent stake in Autostrada Tirrenica from troubled bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA and other investors.

 

  • China’s Bright Food Group Co Ltd has increased the stake it plans to buy in Israeli grocer Tnuva to 70 percent and plans to close the delayed deal by early April, a spokesman for the Chinese firm told Reuters.

 

  • Fidelity Worldwide Investment finds a Deutsche Wohnen offer to take over just over half of Austrian property group Conwert substantially too low to sell its 8 percent stake, an Austrian newspaper reported.

 

  • South Korean department store operator Shinsegae Co Ltd said its parent group has submitted a letter of intent to buy a stake in the biggest shareholder in Asiana Airlines Inc.

 

($1 = 0.8889 euros)

 

(Compiled by Amrutha Gayathri and Kshitiz Goliya in Bengaluru)