Figuring Out Roche’s Tender Offer

January 30, 2009, 11:10 am

Roche’s announcement that it intends to cut the price it is offering for Genentech and launch a hostile tender offer for Genentech’s shares is a surprise. It also sets up an interesting endgame as to how Roche will acquire all of Genentech.

Roche said in its press release Friday that it will commence a tender offer in a few weeks, and that the tender offer will be conditioned on “(i) a non-waivable condition that holders of at least a majority of the outstanding publicly-held Genentech shares tender their shares in the offer and (ii) that Roche has obtained sufficient financing to purchase all outstanding publicly-held shares and all shares issuable upon exercise of outstanding options and to pay related fees and expenses.” MORE »

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Two-Tiered Bank Bailout Said to Be Under Discussion

January 30, 2009, 7:33 am

As the the Obama administration seeks to hammer out a comprehensive plan to repair the financial system, policy officials are discussing a new plan that would see the government buy a portion of banks’ bad assets and offer guarantees against future losses on some of the remainder, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The approach, which seeks to help banks while trying to protect taxpayers from losses, merges two competing ideas, The Journal said. The idea was floated at meeting that included Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila C. Bair, The Journal said, citing people briefed on the meeting. MORE »

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NYSE Euronext Chief Sees Hope for I.P.O. Rebound

January 30, 2009, 7:54 am

Duncan Niederauer, the chief executive of NYSE Euronext, offered a whiff of optimism amid the Davos gloom on Friday as he talked about the market for initial public offerings.

That market has been in a near-comatose state for the last few months, as volatile stock prices, combined with risk-averse institutional investors, led many companies to decide it was better to stay private in this environment. The lack of new stock listings has cut into profits at exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and Euronext, which merged to form the company that Mr. Niederauer now leads. MORE »

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For Some Hedge Funds, 2008 Was a Bumper Year

January 30, 2009, 7:00 am

A handful of hedge funds resisted the global crisis ravaging their rivals, reaping bumper returns in 2008 in a sign that some niche players always beat the market no matter how dire the outlook.

There is no single recipe to explain why CQS’s Asset-Backed Securities rose 72.81 percent or Hugh Hendry’s Eclectica Asset Management flagship fund gained 31.2 percent, other than that they doggedly clung to a strategy they thought would bring in the money. MORE »

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Tesla Said to Lack Cash for San Jose Plant

January 30, 2009, 7:15 am

Tesla Motor’s failure to secure $100 million in venture financing has put the kibosh on its plans to build an auto assembly plant in San Jose, Calif., in a blow to Mayor Chuck Reed’s plans to make the city an epicenter of clean technology, The San Jose Mercury News reported.

Furthermore, Tesla now realizes that the $450 million it hopes to get in government loans will likely got to retrofitting existing buildings rather than constructing new ones, Tesla spokeswoman Rachel Konrad told the newspaper.

When Mayor Reed announced the deal last year, he predicted that Tesla’s 1,025 potential jobs would be crucial in meeting his goal of creating 25,000 clean-tech jobs within 2015. Ms. Konrad said the auto maker would be seeking facilities elsewhere in the Bay Area.

Go to Article from The San Jose Mercury News »

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Private Equity Is Still Alive, Kravis Says

January 30, 2009, 7:50 am

Don’t start preparing for private equity’s funeral, just yet.

That, apparently was the message from buyout veteran Henry R. Kravis, who was speaking on a panel on the global financial system in Davos, Switzerland

“Private equity is not dead,” Mr. Kravis, co-founder and chief of private equity powerhouse Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, said at the World Economic Forum. MORE »

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Economy Pinches the Billable Hour at Law Firms

January 30, 2009, 7:22 am

Lawyers are having trouble defending the most basic yardstick of the legal business — the billable hour.

Clients have complained for years that the practice of billing for each hour worked can encourage law firms to prolong a client’s problem rather than solve it. But the rough economic climate is making clients more demanding, leading many law firms to rethink their business model, The New York Times’s Jonathan D. Glater writes. MORE »

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