Hedge fund TCI is going ‘active’ at Altaba (AABA), urging the company to liquidate if it can’t do a better job narrowing the fund’s discount to NAV. For those that don’t remember, Altaba is just a collection of assets left over from Verizon’s (VZ) 2017 purchase of Yahoo. The real value rests mainly in two pieces: a large… Read More »
That was quick. Whitbread’s (WTBCF) CEO Allison Brittain caved to activist pressure in seemingly record time, announcing the spinoff of Costa Coffee less than two weeks after Elliott Advisors unveiled a ~6% stake in the company. Of course, Whitbread doesn’t believe it caved and in the press release announcing the demerger (British for spinoff), the company notes that… Read More »
Before trade war news jumped to the front pages, China was making headlines for cracking down on its financial firms’ leverage by forcing them to unload some of their overseas holdings. Anbang and its CEO received a lot of headlines, but other companies, such as HNA, were impacted as well. A few years ago, HNA went on a… Read More »
A storm began brewing last winter for Whitbread plc (WTBCF) and its CEO Alison Brittain. Activist investor Sachem Head took a 3.4% stake in the company and began pushing for a breakup of the company. With Paul Singer’s Elliott Advisors becoming the company’s largest shareholder, it’s probably safe to upgrade that storm to hurricane status, category 5. I’m… Read More »
Last year, we discussed Pentair’s(PNR) spin off of nVent(NVT) and commented on how much the strange capitalization was likely to add to the value. With the spinoff now set for the end of the month, it turns out that Pentair gave nVent more than just a bad name. As we had speculated, nVent borrowed $1 billion and will… Read More »