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Corporate Financier’s Notes by Aivars Jurcans
Done! And Done
Howden Group, a UK insurance firm, has bought Aston Lark, a UK insurance broker, for GBP 1.1 billion from Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Bowmark Capital.
Source: Reuters
Vroom Inc, an online used car retailer, has agreed to buy United Auto Credit Corp, an automotive lender, for USD 300 million in cash.
Source: Reuters
Columbia Banking System and Umpqua Bank have agreed to merge in a USD 5 billion all-stock deal. The combined entity will have more than USD 50 billion in assets, with its largest presence in Washington, California and Oregon.
Source: WSJ
Chubb, a US insurance group, has agreed to buy the life insurance and accident and health insurance businesses in the Asia-Pacific region and in Turkey from Cigna in an all-cash deal for USD 5.75 billion.
Source: FT
New Residential Investment Corp agreed to buy Genesis Capital, a lender that caters to fix-and-flip investors and small landlords. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Genesis is said to be on pace to originate about USD 2 billion in loans in 2021.
Source: Bloomberg
AvidXchange, a financial technology company backed by Mastercard, has raised USD 660 million in an initial public offering. At the IPO price the company would have a fully diluted market value of close to USD 5.1 billion
Source: Bloomberg
TradeZero Holding Corp, a platform that provides free and subscription-based software for active stock trading, has agreed to merge with Dune Acquisition Corp, a blank cheque company. The deal is set to give the combined entity an enterprise value of USD 556 million.
Source: Bloomberg
Eurobank, a Greek lender, has agreed to sell a portion of mezzanine and junior notes of a EUR 5.2 billion non-performing loan portfolio securitisation to doValue, a credit servicer.
Source: Reuters
Deals On The Table
Nayifat Finance Company, a Saudi Arabia’s consumer-focused Islamic finance firm, is said to be planning an initial public offering on the Riyadh stock exchange with a free float of 35% of its shares.
Source: Reuters
Renaissance Insurance Group, a Russian online policy provider, is said to be seeking a USD 1 billion valuation for its initial public offering in Moscow.
Source: Bloomberg
Aareal Bank, a German lender which specialises in real estate lending, is said to be “in talks about a possible acquisition of a majority stake in the bank with a group of investors that value it at EUR 1.7 billion”.
Source: Reuters
Thanks, But No Deal
Shinsei Bank, a Japanese lender, is said to be planning to officially reject SBI Holding’s USD 1.1 billion tender offer bid.
Source: Reuters
Up-and-Comers
Trumid, an electronic bond trading platform, has raised USD 208 million in a funding round that valued it at about USD 2.4 billion.
Source: FT
Celsius Network, a cryptocurrency lending platform, has raised USD 400 million in a funding round that valued it at more than USD 3 billion. Founded in 2017, Celsius offers its customers interest of as much as 17% on deposits in cryptocurrencies. The total assets on its platform have reached USD 25 billion in October 2021, up from US 10 billion in March.
Source: FT
ConsenSys, a cryptocurrency startup, is said to be raising funding that would value the company at USD 3 billion. ConsenSys develops and invests in projects built on the ethereum distributed ledger that can be used to create financial services apps and other automated software programs.
Source: FT
Exciting Numbers
Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co (a.k.a KKR), a buyout firm, has almost 2,000 employees and manages USD 429 billion in assets spread across private equity, real estate, insurance and credit investing.
Source: FT
The digital coin market has grown to USD 1.8 trillion in size.
Source: FT
Venture capitalists have invested USD 20.7 billion in cryptocurrency start-ups so far in 2021, according to PitchBook data, an increase of more than 160% from the previous record in 2018.
Source: FT
A Thought Worth Noting
“The digital asset universe is too large to ignore. We believe crypto-based digital assets could form an entirely new asset class.”
The first ever research note dedicated to crypto, Bank of America
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Aivars Jurcans has more than 20 years of corporate finance and investment banking experience. His services are currently available through MURINUS ADVISERS.
Design by Artis Briedis, Photo by Joe Taylor on Unsplash
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