Strategic Thought Transformation - The IIPM Think Tank

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and United Kingdom. Unilever reasoned out the sale claiming that other areas under its portfolio needed considerable attention and that the frozen food sales had dipped by 4.5% last year. The Spanish frozen-food unit of Unilever was sold about two months ago. However, the frozen food business in Italy, which falls under the brand name Findus, will continue to remain with Unilever. The company has also refused to part with its ice cream division, whose brands include Magnum. Permira faced stiff competition from bidders including Capvest and a consortium of Blackstone, JP Morgan Partners & Kerry Foods for the frozen foods business. The divestment of the division is expected to be complete by the end of this year. However, the deal’s conclusion now rests on regulatory approval and a green signal from employee works councils. The company is hoping for an after-tax profit exceeding $1.28 billion. The frozen foods division reported revenues worth $1.59 billion last year and was put up for sale in February this year. Apple burns while Sony moans After Dell, it’s Apple that has rung the alarm bells on defective laptop batteries. Following Dell’s recall of 4.1 million lithiumion batteries made by Sony for its laptops, Apple has also started recalling 1.1 million batteries sold in the US and another 700,000 batteries from across the world. Just like in the case of Dell, these batteries have also been made by Sony Corp. Although, Sony has assured its assistance to Apple in the entire recall process, the episode will surely dampen Apple’s efforts of soon introducing a new range of products supported by Intel Microprocessors. Selling equity, eroding liability The world’s leading mobile telecommunications company, Vodafone Group traded 25% of its stake to Belgium’s prevailing telecom group, Belgacom for $2.55 billion in Proximus. The company found the deal lucrative enough to utilise the sale proceeds in order to lighten its debt burden. The deal will make Belgacom the sole controller of the company’s operations. Earlier this year, Vodafone had also sold part of its besieged Japanese business for $11.36 billion. The company is, however, suppressing demands from its investors to sell-off its stake in Verizon Wireless. The group serves about 186.8 million customers at present. (Refer B&E Stratagem International) BIL plays a winning hand BIL Gaming Operations UK Ltd., the wholly owned subsidiary of Bill International Ltd. (BIL), has struck an all cash deal worth $58.54 million to acquire one of London’s elite casinos – The Clermont Club. BIL is an investment company primarily listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange and enjoys secondary listings on the London and New Zealand Stock Exchanges. The company is known to have made several casino applications in the city of London along with other destinations in the UK. The casino was earlier acquired by The Rank Group Plc (a subsidiary of Grosvenor Casinos Ltd.) in 1990. Rank’s departure, however, has been marked by the need to lay greater focus on mainstream gaming market. Rite Aid acquires to aid its drug stores America’s third largest drugstore chain, Rite Aid Corp. is planning to acquire the US operations of Canadian firm, the Jean Coutu Group Inc. The deal, which is a combination of cash, debt and equity, involves $1.45 billion to be paid in cash and $1.18 billion for 250 million shares. Rite Aid will also undertake a debt of $850 million. This deal will help the third ranker inch closer to its rivals Walgreens and CVS. Rite Aid, which already operates 3,323 chains of its own, will also get hold of 1,858 Eckerd and Brooks drug stores as part of the deal. GE Money takeovers Thai bank Ten years after setting shop in the Thai market and attaining the number one position among the credit card providers in the country, GE Money has acquired a 25.4% stake in Thailand’s Bank of Ayudhya PCL. The $600 million transaction between General Electric Co.’s consumer finance wing and the bank is subject to shareholder approval. The Bank of Ayudhya started operations in 1945 and at present is the sixth largest bank in Thailand with a network of 500 branches. The two companies had earlier entered into a joint venture in 2001. An IIPM Intelligence Unit Publication STRATEGIC INNOVATORS 103
E X E C U T I V E S U M M E R Y Donald to roll the wheels Motorcycle giant Harley-Davidson Inc. has agreed to acquire a major portion of the assets of Australia-based Castalloy. Castalloy has been the sole supplier of cast motorcycle wheels and hubs to Harley-Davidson for the past 20 years. Post the acquisition of assets, a new wing will be formed in Adelaide called New Castalloy. This new wing will be a wholly owned operation of Harley-Davidson and will primarily focus on manufacturing. Donald Gogan, who has been with the Milwaukee-based motorcycle manufacturer since 1992, has been appointed as the Managing Director of this new venture. Santa’s bag to carry Microsoft Zune Toshiba is going to help Microsoft battle the Apple iPod. Microsoft’s Zune, a portable media player that is likely to hit the shelves by the end of this year (just before the American holiday season), will be manufactured by Toshiba. The device that flaunts of a 30 giga byte memory space will enable users to share songs, photographs and other media content using a network referred to as “Pyxis.” Different from Apple iPod, Zune will be able to stream music to up to four other devices. Delayed justice adds further cost Just when a lawsuit that had been lingering for the past nine years approached settlement, it encountered fresh opposition. Television broadcaster EchoStar Communications Corp. was caught in a dispute of programming with its associates ABC, NBC and CBS stations. The media partner had agreed to pay $100 million to resolve the looming dispute, but resistance by a group of Fox Network stations has staggered the process. EchoStar was found guilty of violating payments pertaining to the programming of local sports that the channel airs to several subscribers. The court ruling could ask EchoStar to discontinue serving about 800,000 subscribers, which in turn implies much lower revenues for EchoStar. HP Chairwoman’s Dunn by pretexting! She is often referred to as being charismatic and an expert at whatever she does. She pursued a course in journalism at the University of California working along side as a part-time reporter. Her skill for handling people got her recognised and eventually paved way for her successive promotions at Wells Fargo Investment Advisers. Plagued by breast cancer, she stepped down as the CEO of Barclays Global Investors. Yes, we are talking about none other than Patricia Dunn, who came to be associated with HP in 1998 as a board member and soon rose to the post of the Executive Chairman. But January 2007 will see Dunn stepping out, only to be succeeded by the current CEO Mark Hurd. This down turn in her career comes in the wake of a scandal where the board members were spied on to find out who was responsible for disclosing information from board meetings to the press. And all this is known to have taken place with Dunn’s approval. It was revealed that, a firm hired by HP resorted to pretexting (lying about one’s identity) to get their hands on the personal phone records of nine journalists, directors and employees of HP. Pretexting is actually unlawful in California. There are also chances that Dunn may be tried by the law. Time to get focussed New York Times Co. has new plans to dispose-off its group of nine network TV stations. Although all the stations are profit generating, the move will help the company focus better on its newspaper and digital businesses. In 2005, the nine media channels contributed 4% to the company’s total revenue. This year, the company anticipates the group to deliver total revenue of $150 million and an operating profit of about $33 million. Goldman, Sachs & Co. is the advisory to the sale. Nationwide dreams of building a dream! Nationwide Building Society, the largest mutual organisation among building societies in the UK, has disclosed its intentions to acquire its smaller rival Portman Building Society for about $938.35 million. The merged society will be christened Nationwide Building Society and is expected to be the UK’s second largest mortgage lender and the second largest retail savings provider. All Portman ventures will shed their old names to take up the Nationwide identity. The gross value of total new assets is expected to exceed $281.50 billion. 104 STRATEGIC INNOVATORS An IIPM Intelligence Unit Publication
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