M&A updates

The bidding battle for Transmontaigne (TMG) finally came to an end this week with SemGroup opting out, and Transmontaigne accepting a $11.35/share offer from Morgan Stanley. I had marked this as a hit earlier, along with follow-on posts, the most recent one here. This final cash offer is 78.2% over my average cost of $6.37/share.

The battle for Univision (UVN) has run into rough weather, with the bidding likely to start all over again. An asset like Univison is not getting much interest mainly because of the foreign-ownership restrictions that still apply to the media sector. This is one of those areas, along with airlines and telco, where U.S regulations are even more primitive than those of some emerging market economies.

Greenhill (GHL), the M & A advisor has entered the Canadian market with its purchase of Beaufort Partners. This is an extremely smart move since resource-rich Canada is currently seeing its own version of an M&A boom in the mining/transportation/banking sectors. I had suggested Greenhill here as a way to play the M&A upsurge. Greenhill shares are expensive now, as I noted in another post on risk, but watch for pullbacks to buy.

West Corp (WSTC), which gave me two hits when it purchased Raindance and Intrado, is itself is going private at a significant premium. I do not own shares of West, but I would not have complained if both those hits involved stock swaps instead of cash offers! The pace is definitely picking up.