Month: February 2014

Dover To Remain in S&P 500 While Knowles Will Join The S&P 400 Midcap Index

Dover Corporation’s (DOV) spinoff of Knowles is set for tomorrow and S&P recently announced the resulting changes to its indices. Dover will remain in the S&P 500, but post-spin, Knowles will ‘drop’ to the S&P Midcap 400 where it will replace Apollo Investment (AINV). Interestingly, Apollo is getting the boot due to S&P’s new methodology rules excluding business development companies from… Read More »

Icahn and EBay’s War Of Words Heats Up

That didn’t take long. Just a month after first publicizing his position, Carl Icahn fired another salvo in his campaign to break off PayPal from EBay (EBAY). Mr. Icahn sent an open letter to EBay shareholders informing them that he has uncovered ‘multiple lapses in corporate governance’ at the company and that ‘the complete disregard for accountability at eBay is… Read More »

Tribune Expecting $325m Dividend From Publishing Spinoff?

Tribune’s (TRBAA) upcoming publishing spinoff is on track to be completed later this year and as part of the transaction, the new company will issue new debt in order to fund a dividend to the parent company. While not an uncommon feature of spinoff transactions, the move is drawing a lot of negative attention from news outlets and… Read More »

Arrogance? Confidence? Noble Chooses Paragon Offshore As Name For Spinoff

Noble Corp (NE) has finally unveiled the new name for its upcoming standard spec drilling unit spinoff. No fancy consultants used here, no Russian sex act, no Portmanteau. Instead the company went bold and set the bar high by naming the new company Paragon Offshore. No surprise coming from a company with the name Noble. In fact, the… Read More »

California Spinning! Occidental Petroleum To Spin Off California Assets

After Murphy Oil (MUR) announced a spinoff in late 2012, Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Sankey had a few ideas for whom the next spinoff candidates in the energy space might be. His top picks? Hess Corporation (HES) and Occidental Petroleum (OXY). Congrats Mr. Sankey, you deserve a nice pat on the bac,k because not one, but both companies… Read More »

Tribune Publishing Spin Is On Schedule

Last September we noted that Tribune (TRBAA) was following the industry playbook and spinning off its publishing assets into a separate company. According to a recent article, the company is eyeing to complete the transaction sometime in the middle of the year, either Q2 or early Q3. At the time of the announcement, the company estimated that the… Read More »

ONEOK & Starwood Property Trust Complete Their Spinoffs

For some reason, spins tend to cluster around the end of the month, and January 31st witnessed some impressive action with the completion of two separate transactions. First off, ONEOK (OKE) completed the spinoff of its natural gas distribution business ONE Gas (OGS). The new company is trading under the ticker ‘OGS’ and shareholders of ONEOK should have… Read More »

Dover Board Approves Spin Off, Clearing Way For February Birth Of Knowles

The Dover(DOV) Board has approved the company’s previously announced spin off of Knowles(KN). Dover shareholders of record as of February 19, 2014 will receive one share of Knowles on February 28 for every two shares of Dover that they own. Knowles, which will trade under the ticker KN, will begin regular way trading on March 3. Both stocks… Read More »

Carlyle Will Buy Illinois Tool Works Industrial Packaging Unit For $3.2 Billion

Last week, we reported that Illinois Tool Works(ITW) had decided to sell its Industrial Packaging Unit rather than spin it off. Now, the company has reached an agreement to sell the unit to the Carlyle Group for $3.2 billion.  The deal values the business at 8.5 times EBITDA.  This represents a continuation of a trend where conglomerates are… Read More »