TheChek News Flow

Previous bid for FTSE 100 group from Swedish private equity firm rejected

EQT has submitted an improved takeover bid for Intertek, valuing the FTSE 100 testing specialist at roughly £9.7bn and stepping up its pursuit of the company after an initial bid was rejected earlier this month.

EQT proposed a new offer earlier this week at about £54 a share, according to people familiar with the matter. That would work out to a roughly 5 per cent increase from a previous proposed offer of £51.50 a share in cash.

EQT’s new offer works out to more than an £8.3bn market capitalisation or a roughly £9.7bn enterprise valuation. 

The new offer from the Swedish buyout group will increase pressure on Intertek, which announced last week that it planned a strategic review to explore the separation of its energy and infrastructure business.

That disclosure came two days before EQT confirmed its takeover interest in Intertek on April 16. Intertek said it had rebuffed EQT’s first offer and that its board “unanimously concluded that it fundamentally undervalues Intertek and its future prospects”. 

Shares in Intertek, which carries out safety testing and certification, have surged following the news and are up by about a third this month to trade at more than £48 a share.

That marked a reversal after Intertek’s shares plunged 18 per cent in a single day in early March in reaction to muted forecasts for two of its key business lines. 

News of EQT’s revised offer came on the same day that French competitor Bureau Veritas saw its own shares plunge 13 per cent after cutting its outlook for growth this year, underscoring the challenges for listed companies in the sector. Intertek had previously been involved in long-running merger talks with Bureau Veritas that collapsed in late 2024. 

Under UK takeover regulations, EQT has until 14 May to make a firm offer for Intertek or walk away.

Intertek did not immediately respond to a request for comment. EQT declined to comment.

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Apple’s recent crackdown on the MyFitnessPal-owned Cal AI food-logging app demonstrates that the tech giant is still enforcing its strict App Store rules around the use of external payments. The calorie-counting app, which was briefly removed from the App Store last week, had attempted to skirt Apple’s in-app purchase guidelines and had also employed manipulative tactics, Apple told TechCrunch.

The developer has since addressed the issues, and the app has returned to Apple’s App Store.

Cal AI’s App Store rejection made the rounds on social media last week. Apple appeared to be making an example of the company, originally founded by a pair of high school students who grew the business to $50 million in ARR before being acquired by MyFitnessPal in March.

Initially, there was concern that Apple had simply removed the app for using web payments instead of Apple’s own in-app purchase (or IAP), even though that is now permitted.

At present, Apple’s App Store Guidelines allow U.S.-based developers to link out to external payment systems, as a result of a court ruling in the lawsuit brought against Apple by Epic Games. In most cases, however, apps are still required to offer Apple’s in-app purchase option alongside any external link. (The major exception here is for what Apple calls “reader” apps — meaning those that provide subscription-based access to digital content, like books, audio, music, video streaming, and more. Cal AI does not qualify for this exception.)

Apple, when reached for comment, said that the app’s brief removal was due to multiple violations of its rules, including bypassing Apple’s in-app purchase flow, using deceptive billing design, and other manipulative tactics. The episode shows that Apple is still actively policing how developers implement web payments, even though the Epic ruling had loosened some earlier restrictions.

Chief among the violations, Apple said that Cal AI had bypassed Apple’s in-app purchases by implementing an embedded in-app payment flow using a third-party service (in this case, Stripe) to unlock access to digital goods. In doing so, it removed Apple’s in-app purchase (IAP) as an option for users during checkout. This violated Apple’s App Review Guideline 3.1.1, which requires that IAP be offered alongside the external link.

Apple said that the company had also been engaged in deceptive billing practices, in violation of Guideline 3.1.2c, as Cal AI’s paywall was designed to mislead and confuse consumers. Specifically, the paywall displayed the weekly calculated pricing more prominently than the actual amount the user would be billed. It also included a toggle for a free trial that obscured information about the subscription’s automatic renewal.

Cal AI was further dinged for its use of “manipulative tactics,” Apple said, in violation of the Developer Code of Conduct’s guideline 5.6. One issue was that the app would prompt users who declined the first subscription offer with a second, different subscription purchase flow. Plus, the app had numerous negative user reviews that accused the app of being a scam because of how it presented its third-party payment options.

After its rejection, Cal AI addressed the issues, allowing it to return to the store, Apple confirmed.

MyFitnessPal and Cal AI did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

It would not be surprising if Cal AI had wanted to test the waters to see how actively Apple’s app review team was enforcing its rules in the wake of the Apple-Epic court ruling. Apple’s response should serve as a warning that the tech giant is still policing its App Store — even at the risk of losing out on its cut of the revenue of a viral app, which today sits in the No. 4 spot on the App Store’s Health & Fitness charts.

The weeks leading up to SpaceX’s initial public offering will test big ideas about the space industry and the future of artificial intelligence. It will also answer a more basic question: how well Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs can work together.

The Wall Street rivals’ top bankers have been holed up at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters in recent weeks alongside the rocketship company’s finance executives, people familiar with the matter said. The high-stakes assignment for “Project Apex,” the internal name for the IPO, has fallen to bankers such as Morgan Stanley’s Michael Grimes and Kate Claassen, as well as Goldman Sachs’ Kim Posnett and Kay Lee.

The two banks, which lead the vast majority of tech IPOs, typically have the top assignments on the largest tech deals, with one generally winning the coveted “lead left” position. But SpaceX hasn’t officially named the banks running the IPO—and may not name a lead left bank at all, and instead list the banks alphabetically. In fact, no bank was on the cover of a version of the confidential IPO prospectus filed in late March, a person who reviewed it said.

Spokespeople for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Until that decision, the fierce rivals instead have had to work together to draft the prospectus, hammer out details like lock-up restrictions and work with other banks, such as J.P. Morgan, Citi and Bank of America, helping advise or sell the deal around the world.

They’ll have time to get to know each other better. At least some of the group will now head out on the road, for a series of meetings with investors and analysts to show off SpaceX’s Starship site on the southern tip of Texas, and its data centers in Tennessee, before a more formal investor roadshow in early June and an IPO in the middle of that month. During that roadshow, SpaceX investors can field questions about SpaceX's huge debt load, which we broke here today, or Musk's new compensation package—tied to a Mars colony and data centers in space—that we broke last night.

How Goldman and Morgan Stanley pull off the expected $75 billion IPO could also determine their ability to win the next mega IPOs. The bankers, after a spell of infrequent and underperforming IPOs, have also been angling to lead expected public offerings for Anthropic and OpenAI.

One of the banks could still end up as the lead when the SpaceX document is publicly unveiled next month. The banks are in talks for the stabilization agent role, a coveted job overseeing the early hours of trading in the IPO that could bring additional fees and trading commissions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Morgan Stanley had long been considered as the favorite to win the top banking role on the SpaceX deal, according to predictions site Polymarket. That’s in large part because it helped Musk buy Twitter in 2021 and lent significant money for the deal. Grimes, Morgan Stanley’s star banker, returned to the bank recently after a short-lived stint in the Trump administration leading a government investment accelerator. He and Claasen, Morgan Stanley’s managing director of technology investment banking, worked closely with Musk on his acquisition of Twitter, now named X.

Other signs have pointed to Morgan Stanley eventually taking the top role. Its bankers including Grimes led a meeting of other banks working on the deal, known as the syndicate, earlier this month. Morgan Stanley is also leaning on Colin Stewart, one of the most senior IPO bankers in tech, whose notable recent listings include the CoreWeave and Reddit IPOs, to ensure the highly complicated deal runs smoothly.

The fact that Goldman Sachs, which represented Twitter’s board in its sale to Musk, is still in the conversation to lead the offering might be considered a win for the bank, given Morgan Stanley’s past work with Musk. While Posnett is a familiar face atop Goldman as its New York-based co-head of global investment banking, she was known more for working on big acquisitions such as Silver Lake’s $25 billion take-private of sports and entertainment giant Endeavor in 2024, than she is for Musk’s other acquisitions.

But Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has made the IPO a top priority for bankers, a person close to the bank said. Also working on the SpaceX deal is Los Angeles-based Dan Dees, Goldman’s co-head of global head of banking and markets. SpaceX marks a high-profile return to the Musk business for Dees, who has advised Musk’s Tesla in the past.

The group of SpaceX finance executives also includes two Goldman Sachs veterans: SpaceX head of investor relations Andrea Williams and vice president of finance Majla Custo.

The bankers take their orders from a SpaceX finance team that includes chief financial officer Bret Johnsen, a 15-year mainstay at the company, who has outlasted other Musk-company finance chiefs and is known as a savvy operator. He previously worked at Broadcom and Mindspeed, a semiconductor company

Start-up backing new company intended to help deploy AI within businesses owned by PE firms

OpenAI has pledged up to $1.5bn to a new joint venture with private equity firms, part of its effort to beat rival Anthropic and corner the increasingly lucrative market of selling AI tools to businesses.

The start-up will put an initial $500mn of its equity into the joint venture, which will be valued at $10bn as part of a funding round expected to close in early May, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

OpenAI has the option to add a further $1bn at a later date, they said. Investors including TPG, Bain Capital, Advent International, Brookfield and Goanna Capital will invest another $4bn, they added.

The new venture, internally named ‘DeployCo’ has started to hire its own staff alongside secondees from OpenAI and will charge its clients — primarily the private equity firms’ portfolio companies — to embed AI into their businesses.

DeployCo is designed to accelerate the adoption of OpenAI’s tools in the workplace and forms a key part of the company’s assault on the enterprise market. OpenAI is also working with consultancies including McKinsey & Company and Accenture on that effort.

The venture’s private equity backers will invest for five years, and OpenAI had guaranteed them an annual 17.5 per cent return. “That is a floor . . . but we expect it to be much higher,” said a person with knowledge of the plans.

That is roughly the minimum return a PE fund might target, although the guarantee reduces the risk the investors are taking on in the transaction. OpenAI in return will get the benefit of “patient capital, locked up for five years,” according to the person.

The OpenAI equity held by the joint venture could be used to strike deals to acquire technology and intellectual property in the future.

The new company “generates revenue by being the best in the world at AI deployment, at rewiring businesses. If we’re very early in this cycle [of AI adoption], then that’s a very valuable asset,” they said.

It will be a key part of the group’s strategy to gain the upper hand on rival Anthropic, whose annualised revenue has more than trebled this year on the strength of its enterprise products such as Claude Code.

Anthropic is also in talks with PE firms including Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman about partnering on a joint venture to create a consultancy to help deploy novel AI technologies inside a broad stable of businesses, according to people briefed on the matter.

OpenAI executives have described a “capability overhang” in AI, meaning today’s models are capable of far more than they are being used for. Chief revenue officer Denise Dresser in a note to sales staff this month said the biggest “bottleneck” to companies using AI is not the technology but “whether companies can deploy it”.

DeployCo, a Delaware-listed LLC, will be majority owned by OpenAI and is currently managed by Brad Lightcap, until recently the group’s chief operating officer. OpenAI will have super-voting shares, according to a person with knowledge of the structure.

Lightcap has overseen the hiring of dozens of ‘forward deployed engineers’, software developers who are embedded within companies to help them use technology. OpenAI will also send staff on secondment to the new company, said the person with knowledge of the plans.

That model has been successful for US software group Palantir, which pioneered the use of forward-deployed engineers.

A number of venture firms have also sought to capture the upside from businesses’ AI adoption. General Catalyst, Thrive Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as Jeff Bezos’ AI start-up Project Prometheus, have each bought up companies and infused them with the technology, or are planning to do so.

OpenAI, TPG, Bain, Advent, Brookfield and Goanna declined to comment.