Mergers and acquisitions

Hunstman Corp and Switzerland’s Clariant AG announced their merger on Monday; the deal would create a trans-Atlantic company valued at about $14 billion offering an array of chemicals such as polyurethanes, pigments, automotive fluids, additives and resins that are used across industries ranging from aerospace to agriculture to household cleaning.
Under the terms of the proposed deal, Clariant shareholders would own 52 percent of the combined company. Huntsman shareholders, including its eponymous founding family, would own the rest.

Facebook has been fined €110m by the EU for providing misleading information about its 2014 takeover of WhatsApp. The Commission previously expressed concern that the social media giant had not correctly communicated planned changes to its privacy policy.

The European commission said it had imposed a “proportionate” fine on the technology company to send a clear signal that all firms must comply with EU competition rules.

Credit ratings agency Moody’s said Monday it will buy Dutch business intelligence company Bureau van Dijk for for about $3.3 billion to extend its risk data and analytical businesses.

Bureau van Dijk is currently owned by investment firm EQT and it distributes financial information and private company datasets of 220 million companies. "Bureau van Dijk is a high growth information aggregator and distributor that positions Moody’s at the center of a unique network of global risk data," said Moody’s CEO Raymond McDaniel. "This acquisition provides significant opportunities for Moody’s Analytics to offer complementary products, create new risk solutions and extend its reach to new and evolving market segments."

Shareholders in Swiss pesticide and seed giant Syngenta have accepted the company’s takeover by state-owned ChemChina, the companies said Friday, which would be the biggest overseas acquisition by a Chinese firm.
The proposed merger is part of a broader wave of consolidation in the agro-chemicals sector that has worried environmental activists and farmers.
At the closing date for the offer on May 4, shareholders holding around 80.7 percent of the company’s stock had accepted the US$43-billion takeover, according to a preliminary count. Subject to confirmation of the results, “the Minimum Acceptance Rate condition of 67 percent of issued Syngenta shares has been met”, they said in a statement.

Chinese conglomerate HNA Group has become Deutsche Bank AG’s largest shareholder after increasing its stake in the German lender to almost 10%, according to a filing made by asset manager C-Quadrat and other entities. It took HNA’s stake to 9.92%, following an initial stake of 4.76%, which it had earlier secured through C-Quadrat.
The acquisition of a significant stake in a pillar of European finance is another example of China’s growing global influence. Last year, Chinese firms announced around $220 billion worth of deals for foreign companies, far more than any previous year. HNA’s increased stake in Deutsche Bank makes it the lender’s largest shareholder, ahead of members of Qatar’s royal family and U.S. money manager BlackRock, according to public filings.

Finally, the integration of the Swiss business of Banca Svizzera Italiana (BSI) into EFG Bank has been completed. From this moment, the majority of the customer relationships and employees of BSI are transferred, as EFG referred in a media release. The combined business will now be launched on the market under the name EFG.

EFG International said it completed the legal integration of "substantially all" of BSI SA’s Swiss business into EFG Bank AG, a 100 percent subsidiary of EFG International. The remaining BSI entities in Luxembourg and Monaco are expected to be integrated in the course of the second quarter of 2017, EFG said.

US regulators have agreed to a Chinese conglomerate’s proposed $43 billion acquisition of Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta on condition it sells some businesses to satisfy anti-monopoly objections.

China National Chemical and Switzerland’s Syngenta have agreed to divest three types of pesticides in order to win U.S. Federal Trade Commission approval for their $43 billion merger, the largest ever overseas acquisition by a Chinese company. A U.S. national security panel cleared the deal in August 2016, despite concerns among some lawmakers and farmers about China’s influence in U.S. food production.

The merger between the Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange has been vetoed by the European Commission because of competition concerns, ending a third attempt in 17 years to unite the financial hubs of London and Frankfurt.
In a statement on Wednesday, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Britain’s decision to leave the 28-nation bloc had played no role in banning the tie-up.