In brief top news 2

Management at Mayborn Group, a UK based manufacturer and distributor of baby accessories, fabric dyes and other household products, has confirmed that it continues to support a proposed £116.3m (US$215m) takeover offer for the group from 3i Group, despite ongoing opposition from shareholder Trafalgar Asset Managers.

In May, Jake Acquisitions, a newly formed company backed by 3i Group, agreed a deal to acquire the entire share capital of Mayborn for 500p per share in cash through a scheme of arrangement. The 3i unit received irrevocable undertakings to vote for the scheme with respect to 53.2% of the company’s ordinary share capital.

3i is being advised by Hawkpoint Partners; Soloman Hare is advising Mayborn.

• Holmar has announced that it is going ahead with the acquisition of telent under a scheme of arrangement that values the target company’s equity at £346m (US$638m).

Telent is the UK and German rump of one-time telecommunications equipment giant Marconi Corporation. Holmar is a holding company formed by Fortress Investment Group.

The two companies’ boards reached agreement in principle late last month on a cash offer of 529.5p a share for telent’s diluted share capital – a premium of 13% to the company’s closing price on May 24, the day before the announcement.

The telent board, advised by Morgan Stanley and Lazard, said it considered the terms of the acquisition “fair and reasonable” and that it would unanimously recommend shareholders to vote in favour of the proposal.

Telent chairman John Devaney said the takeover would provide a secure future for the business, its customers, workforce and pensioners and be “the closing chapter in the resolution of the difficulties the company faced in 2001”.

Earlier this year, telent returned £590m (275p a share) to investors ahead of a 2-for-7 share consolidation on March 27, following the disposal of its equipment and international services business to Ericsson.

The deal remains conditional on Holmar, advised by Goldman Sachs, securing approval from the European competition authorities as well as telent’s shareholders.

• Industri Kapital, the Nordic private equity firm, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Cerba European Lab, a French medical testing company, from an investor group led by Astorg Partners. The purchase price amounts to about €160m, according to reports.

Cerba European Lab, which currently employs 500 staff, emerged from a merger involving CMBS (Special Medical Test Center) to form Laboratoire Pasteur Cerba in 1999, before being acquired by Astorg Partners and the management team in 2002.

In 2005, the group achieved sales of about €100m.