The Nikkei Shimbun reported today Sanyo has called off plans to sell Sanyo Semiconductor Co. to Advantage Partners, Japan’s largest buyout firm. The transaction had been priced at Y110 billion or approximately $940M. Shares of Sanyo (JP: 6764) [ADR: SANYY.PK] were down 7.1% to Y182 at the end of the morning session Wednesday. Goldman Sachs […]

[Read more →]

Dana Cimilluca of Deal Journal (WSJ.com) pointed to data from Thomson showing that M&A deals as a percent of GDP currently account for about 4%, compared to 7% in 1999 at the peak of the dot-com bubble. Also, there’s a 67% correlation between economic activity and M&A since 1990 — the economy is slowing but […]

[Read more →]

A recent Economist article, “Give peace a rating” (June 2, 2007), discussed the use of indices measuring “peace” to rank countries. The Economist’s sister co. Economist Intelligence Unit has one, found in the accompanying image (see below) from the article. Japan ranks 5th-highest in the EIU’s index. This is obviously a positive factor in terms […]

[Read more →]

Below are two pieces from Wed.’s FT Alphaville’s The 6am Cut I’d like to share:
(1) “Overworked, understaffed, banks fear errors” — In short, executives at the world’s top i-banks admit their staff are under pressure from the record volume of M&A activity. [By the way, I read on a WSJ Deal newsletter / […]

[Read more →]