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Quentin Webb on Muck Rack

Quentin Webb

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London
As seen in: Bloomberg News, The New York Times, Reuters, The Economic Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal (Japan), The Wall Street Journal (China), Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Slate, Sydney Morning Herald and
Covers:  mergers & acquisitions, deals, corporate finance, private equity, m&a, ipos
Deputy finance editor for Europe at The Wall Street Journal. Views here are mine.
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Romney tax row may bite European private equity

Romney tax row may bite European private equity

Reuters Breakingviews — European buyout bosses are unlikely to run for high office. But, like the former Bain Capital boss fighting to clinch the Republican presidential nomination, they also cash in on "carried interest" schemes which usually avoid income tax. The system is due a re-think on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Formula one drives hard bargain

Formula one drives hard bargain

Reuters Breakingviews — Formula One's owners are driving a hard bargain. Securing $1.6 billion from pre-IPO investors is a big boost as majority owner CVC readies Bernie Ecclestone's motor-racing circus for a Singapore flotation.
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Spotify’s $4 billion pitch sounds high

Spotify’s $4 billion pitch sounds high

Reuters Breakingviews — Spotify's pitch to prospective shareholders looks ambitious. The online music-streaming firm boasts rapid growth and a popular friend in Facebook. But it lacks the economics of the best dot-com hits.
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Newest burger kings get Whopper of a finder's fee

Newest burger kings get Whopper of a finder's fee

Reuters Breakingviews — The biggest rival of McDonald's in the hamburger wars will return to the U.S. equity markets via a $1.4 billion tie-up with Justice Holdings, a London variant on the "special purpose acquisition company". Justice's founders get roughly $165 million for cooking up the deal.
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Douwe Egberts listing has to create its own buzz

Douwe Egberts listing has to create its own buzz

Reuters Breakingviews — Sara Lee's coffee spin-off must create its own buzz. Investors need to believe the unit, officially known as "D.E Master Blenders 1753", will benefit from a sharper focus and strong leadership.
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UPS love letter validates TNT’s earlier break-up

UPS love letter validates TNT’s earlier break-up

Reuters Breakingviews — The U.S. parcel service has admired its smaller Dutch peer for years, and proposed just before Valentine's Day. TNT is thinking about it. But clearly its 2011 split from PostNL, the dowdy domestic mail business, is finally achieving the desired effect.
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Glenstrata wobble another blow for M&A bankers

Glenstrata wobble another blow for M&A bankers

Reuters Breakingviews — The collapse of Glencore-Xstrata would be a $130 million blow to mergers and acquisitions bankers. Nine banks would lose most of that fee pool, and league-table standing too, if investor pressure nixes the $26 billion Xstrata buyout.
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Man Utd’s IPO transfer keeps owners in control

Man Utd’s IPO transfer keeps owners in control

Reuters Breakingviews — For months, the owners of the English soccer club had sought a $1 billion initial public offering in Singapore. Now the plan has switched to a U.S. listing, reports IFR. New York doesn't seem like the natural venue for a soccer share sale. But it's plausible the deal will still fly, and the lop-sided governance in plan A remains.
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Ferretti's yachts find fitting berth in China

Ferretti's yachts find fitting berth in China

Reuters Breakingviews — Few companies embody the highs and lows of turbo-charged modern finance better than Ferretti. Once the luxury yachtmaker made a mint for private equity. Now a state-backed Chinese industrial conglomerate is buying it for at most a fifth of its peak value.
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Special Report -The biggest company you never heard of

Special Report -The biggest company you never heard of

Reuters — On Christmas Eve 2008, in the depths of the global financial crisis, Katanga Mining accepted a lifeline it could not refuse.
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Exclusive - Abu Dhabi, hedge funds to back Glencore IPO

Exclusive - Abu Dhabi, hedge funds to back Glencore IPO

Reuters — An Abu Dhabi vehicle, big hedge fund managers and Swiss private banks are set to serve as "cornerstone" investors backing commodity trader Glencore's $12 billion flotation, a person familiar with the matter said.
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Deutsche nears Actavis debt deal

Deutsche nears Actavis debt deal

Reuters — Deutsche Bank is close to a deal with the Icelandic tycoon who owns generic drugmaker Actavis, to slash its crippling multi-billion-euro debt load, sources familiar with the matter said.
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Exclusive: ISS owners eyeing IPO or sale

Exclusive: ISS owners eyeing IPO or sale

Reuters — The owners of Danish cleaning firm ISS have revived plans for a multi-billion euro flotation, asking banks to pitch for roles helping to list or sell the company, three people familiar with the matter said.
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Fiat, Glaxo, EDF reinvent M&A

Fiat, Glaxo, EDF reinvent M&A

Reuters — The twinning of two big HIV-drug operations, EDF's nuclear dealings, and Fiat's audacious bid to forge a global carmaker show necessity is now the mother of invention in mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
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Banks mull £1.3 billion sale or IPO of Edwards

Banks mull £1.3 billion sale or IPO of Edwards

Reuters — The owners of British engineering firm Edwards, whose vacuum technology is used by the world's biggest chipmakers, have hired a trio of investment banks to explore a $2 billion-plus sale or flotation.
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Creeping takeovers stalk European M&A

Creeping takeovers stalk European M&A

Reuters — A string of stake buys and takeover bids has shown how merger rules in the euro zone's two biggest economies can be used to gain control of a target quietly or on the cheap.
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Chelsea FC website operator eyes float

Chelsea FC website operator eyes float

Reuters — Billionaire Len Blavatnik is considering floating Perform Group, the digital sports-media specialist that runs the Premier League and Chelsea Football Club's websites, people familiar with the matter said.
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The empires strike back

The empires strike back

Reuters Breakingviews — Three deals from 2012 will reshape the book, music and film industries in 2013: Penguin's merger with Random House, Universal's $1.9 billion purchase of EMI's recorded-music business, and Walt Disney's $4.1 billion takeover of Lucasfilm. There are sound business reasons for all three. There are also reasons for artists and consumers to fret.
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A merger arb writes to Santa

A merger arb writes to Santa

Reuters Breakingviews — After another thin and bumpy year for betting on M&A, one desperate European merger arbitrageur wrote to Santa. Breakingviews obtained a copy...
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Lynch hires Clifford Chance in HP-Autonomy row

Lynch hires Clifford Chance in HP-Autonomy row

Reuters Breakingviews — Mike Lynch, the technology entrepreneur at the centre of an $8.8 billion accounting scandal, has hired one of Britain's biggest law firms as he seeks to rebut allegations made by U.S. computing giant Hewlett-Packard...
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How could HP find a $5bln gap in Autonomy's value? | Features | Breakingviews

How could HP find a $5bln gap in Autonomy's value? | Features | Breakingviews

Reuters Breakingviews — The U.S. tech giant claims to have uncovered all kinds of accounting nasties at Autonomy, the British software outfit it bought last year. But HP won't say quite how the allegations - strongly denied by Autonomy's ex-boss Mike Lynch - could produce such a colossal writedown. Breakingviews tries a spot of reverse-engineering to see how it could be possible.
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