Boykin Curry is Bullish on $GS $AON $AXP (InsiderMonkey)
Boykin Curry is extremely bullish on Goldman Sachs (GS) and AON Corp (AON). Boykin Curry isn’t one of the well-known hedge fund managers despite beating the S&P 500 index by 6 percentage points annually for more than 20 years. In 2010 Eagle Capital returned 21% and beat the S&P 500 index by also 6 percentage points. This is not the first time Boykin Curry presented at the Value Investing Congress.
KKR and MBK in Bidding on Samsung Assets (Reuters)
Global private equity fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co LP and Asia buyout fund MBK Partners are among bidders for a majority stake in Samsung Group procurement arm iMarketKorea Inc , in a rare divestment by the South Korean conglomerate, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
Citigroup Closes Proprietary Trading Unit (Bloomberg)
Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-biggest U.S. lender, said it’s closing a proprietary-trading unit that incurred losses in the third quarter, as regulators prepare to restrict banks from making bets with shareholder cash. The company is almost “two-thirds done” winding down the Equity Principal Strategies unit, Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach said yesterday in a conference call with analysts. Market turmoil caused a revenue decline for the unit, which suffered losses as it exited trading positions, Gerspach said.
Kinder Morgan-El Paso Deal Financed by Barclays (NYTimes)
One of the biggest deals of the year has one of the biggest loans. For its $21.1 billion acquisition of the El Paso Corporation, Kinder Morgan has received a financing commitment from Barclays Capital, one of its advisers, to pay for the cash portion. Kinder Morgan said that the cash component of its bid was roughly $11.5 billion, though people briefed on the matter said that the final size of the loan had not been fixed. And the final terms of the financing were still being negotiated as of Monday afternoon, these people added.
El Paso Deal Makes Williams Cos. Cheap Takeover Target (Bloomberg)
Kinder Morgan Inc.’s takeover of El Paso Corp. (EP) at the highest premium for a U.S. pipeline operator in 15 years is turning Williams Cos. into the industry’s cheapest takeover target. Williams, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based pipeline owner pursuing a separation of its oil and natural-gas exploration unit, yesterday was valued at 7.5 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the lowest multiple of any U.S. pipeline company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s almost half the 14 times Ebitda Kinder Morgan said this week it’s paying for El Paso in a $38 billion purchase that will create the biggest U.S. pipeline operator. The 47 percent premium is the industry’s richest since 1996, the data show.
Energy Deals Increase as Low Economy Turns Market into Bargain Bin (NYTimes)
Global energy giants are capitalizing on the country’s economic woes. With commodity prices falling, big domestic and international players are tapping their vast cash reserves to buy oil and gas companies, whose stocks have been decimated by the downturn. On Monday, Statoil of Norway agreed to buy Brigham Exploration Company for $4.4 billion to gain control of potentially lucrative oil fields across North Dakota and Montana. At $36.50 a share, the price tag is nearly 4 percent below Brigham’s high in April.
Leonid Boguslavsky Launches VC Fund (FT)
The investor behind some of Russia’s best-known internet success stories, including Yandex and Ozon, is launching a $100m venture-capital fund in the US. Leonid Boguslavsky, president and chief executive of Ru-Net, plans to invest in early-stage software, cloud computing and, in time, eCommerce and internet services, through a new office in New York.
