- Users will be able to share Stories to their linked social media accounts, or through text or email with a link to a webpage where people who don't have the app can view the message.
- Snapchat launched Stories in 2014 as a way to share photos and videos with all of your followers at once.
- It's Snap's first practical partnership with fellow social media companies, Facebook and Twitter, which CEO Evan Spiegel has made a point to distance the company from in the past.
BMW and Daimler close to merging car-sharing units: executive
BERLIN (Reuters) - German carmakers Daimler (DAIGn.DE) and BMW (BMWG.DE) are close to agreeing to combine their car-sharing services Car2Go and DriveNow, a senior executive at one of the carmakers told Reuters on Tuesday.
The merger talks are in the final stages and the combined company will be independently run, with BMW and Daimler as largest shareholders, the source said, adding that the assets being pooled include BMW’s ParkNow parking app.
The likely deal - first mooted more than a year ago - is seen as a way to help the German brands compete with the U.S.-based ride-hailing service Uber [UBER.UL].
Daimler’s Car2Go, which launched in 2008, describes itself as the world’s largest one-way car-sharing service. It operates around 14,000 cars in 26 cities in North America, western Europe and China.
DriveNow is a joint venture between BMW and car rental firm Sixt (SIXG.DE) founded in 2011, which operates more than 6,000 vehicles in nine major European cities.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported, without citing its sources, that both brands would keep their names, but their technology would be merged. It said a deal could be signed next month.
A Daimler spokeswoman declined to comment on what she described as speculation. Representatives of BMW and Sixt were not immediately available to comment.
Reports of a possible merger first emerged more than a year ago, but the plan was rejected by Sixt. The FAZ said Sixt was close to agreeing to BMW buying part of its stake and brand rights.
Car2Go’s customer numbers rose 30 percent in 2017 to almost 3 million, including 870,000 in Germany, while DriveNow’s rose by a quarter to 1 million users, including 720,000 in Germany.
Steinhoff USD 584m ABB of PSG more than 3x oversubscribed, driven by local blue-chip investors
23 JAN 2018
Retail group Steinhoff’s [JSE:SNH] placing of 29.5m PSG Group [JSE:PSG] shares by way of an accelerated bookbuild was oversubscribed by more than three times, according to a source close to the situation.
Steinhoff successfully placed the shares at a price of ZAR 240 (USD 19.75) per share, which represents a 5.3% discount to Friday’s (19 January) closing price. Total proceeds amounted to ZAR 7.1bn.
South African investors, including blue chip asset managers, drove demand, said the source, adding that there was also some international support for the offering.
Allocations have a “healthy balance” of long-only investors and hedge funds, with a nice showing from long-term investors, the source said.
The placement was regarded as successful despite a dip in PSG’s share price prior to launch, as the market was expecting Steinhoff to sell down its stake in the investment company, he said. In December, Reuters reported that Steinhoff was contemplating selling its stakes in PSG and industrials group Kap Industrial Holdings [JSE:KAP]. PSG’s stock price went down nearly 20% in the first half of December 2017.
Around the same time last year, beleaguered global retailer Steinhoff International announced plans to raise about EUR 2bn to help finance existing operations and reduce debt.
The block represents 13.5% of PSG’s share capital and around 85% of Steinhoff’s stake in the business.
PSG Capital and Standard Bank were joint bookrunners on the placement.
PSG did not return a request for comment.
Carrefour CFO denies plans to merge with Fnac Darty (Merger Market)
23 JAN 2018
- Carrefour to remain largest shareholder in Carrefour China
- Minority stake acquisitions not ruled out as part of EUR 2.8bn digital investment plan
Carrefour [EPA:CA] has no plans to acquire a minority or majority stake in Fnac Darty [EPA:FNAC], the supermarket group's CFO Mathieu Malige told this news service on the sidelines of the group's transformation plan presented today (23 January) in Paris.
"We have a purchasing agreement, that's all," he said.
Carrefour and Fnac Darty on 5 December announced the signature of an agreement relating to a purchasing partnership for domestic appliances and consumer electronics in France.
This cooperation should be effective for the 2018 supplier negotiations. Carrefour and Fnac Darty will maintain independent commercial policies, a joint press release read.
Late last year, it was reported that rumours pointing to a merger between Fnac Darty and Carrefour had intensified in the context of a long-awaited disclosure of the France-based grocery retailer's operational turnaround plan.
As part of its transformation plan, Carrefour pledged to invest EUR 2.8bn in digital to strengthen its market position in omnichannel services (web to store, delivery, mobile and e-payment) and to reach a EUR 5bn revenues in food e-commerce by 2022 (vs. EUR 850m in 2017), CEO Alexandre Bompard announced today during the presentation.
Bompard and Malige were formerly CEO and CFO of Fnac Darty, respectively.
The French supermarket group also announced the potential acquisition of a stake in its subsidiary (Carrefour China) by Chinese internet giant Tencent [HKG: 0700] and Chinese fresh food retailer, Yonghui Superstores [SHE: 601933] for an undisclosed value.
“Carrefour will specify in due time what will be the exact stakes Yonghui and Tencent will acquire,” the CFO said. Carrefour will retain the largest stake in Carrefour China, he added.
It has not been yet decided whether the combined stakes of Tencent and Yonghui will represent a majority stake, the CFO said, declining to give further details.
Digital transformation
As part of the EUR 2.8bn investment in digital, Carrefour does not rule out acquiring other minority stakes in innovative start-ups and companies to accelerate the group's digital transformation, and the development of “omnichannel” services, Malige told this news service.
“However potential minority stake acquisitions won’t be central for Carrefour's transformation plan,” he said, adding the group did not plan to raise its 17% stake in French online private sales specialist Showroomprivé [EPA:SRP].
Earlier this month, Carrefour announced it had agreed to acquire a 17% stake in Showroomprivé from Conforama, a subsidiary of the Steinhoff group [FRA:SNH].
The transaction will be made as an off-market acquisition of the block of shares owned by Conforama at price of EUR 13.5 per share, for a total EUR 79m, as reported.
Carrefour shares are today trading at EUR 19.30, giving it a market capitalisation of EUR 14.9bn.
Bitcoin broker Coinbase booked $1 billion in revenue last year — so the company has told hovering VCs to back off
Coinbase issues a statement that warns its own shareholders.
Coinbase, the bitcoin trading broker that has exploded in popularity as cryptocurrencies surge and nose dive, has encountered an unusual problem for a Silicon Valley startup: Too many investors are trying to get in.
The six-year-old company crossed $1 billion in revenue last year, Recode has learned from industry sources, a tremendous rise fueled by layman interest in both bitcoin and competing virtual currencies that users can buy and sell through the app.
The company’s valuation has likely at least doubled since its last valuation of $1.6 billion in August. Coinbase was only expected to do about $600 million in yearly revenue as of September 30, according to people with knowledge of the figures, but bitcoin’s run between Thanksgiving and Christmas boosted the company’s 2017 revenue to over $1 billion.
Bitcoin is altogether only worth about $175 billion in market value as of today’s trading price of about $10,500 — a 50 percent drop from just a month ago. And so Coinbase’s $1 billion in revenue suggests it has become the most-used broker for bitcoin transactions.
Coinbase makes money not on bitcoin’s price but on the volume of trades — charging both the buyer and seller usually a fee between 0.25 percent and 1 percent of the total transaction size through the site. The company serves as both an exchange and a broker of deals, though it does not serve as a market maker that holds bitcoin.
Its success has attracted overwhelming interest from outside investors in acquiring some of the company, with several shareholders telling Recode that venture capitalists and private brokers have recently begun asking them if they would consider selling their Coinbase shares.
The only problem? Coinbase doesn’t allow that.
Coinbase effectively warned its own shareholders to not engage in those conversations in a statement to Recode this weekend.
“As a private company, Coinbase does not allow trading of stock on secondary markets for a variety of reasons, including the fact that there is not full and equal information available to the market,” the company said. “We will take appropriate action if we find people have sold Coinbase shares in violation of our agreements not to do so.”
Investors are desperate to purchase shares in the company. But Coinbase already raised $100 million just six months ago — just before the bitcoin craze took off in earnest that fall — meaning that outside investors will have to wait for probably more than a year until the company is ready to raise another round of cash.
The problem, though, is that several company insiders expect the company to never fundraise again and that the round led by IVP in August could be the company’s last before an IPO. Investors that spoke to company leadership later this fall were told that they could not currently buy shares in the company.
So with the front door closed, investors are now trying the back door.
One investor told Recode that he was being “pinged constantly by secondary brokers” seeking a small amount of shares to the company. A second investor said venture capitalists were reaching out to him directly to gauge his interest in parting with any of his holdings. Neither said conversations progressed to specifics over pricing.
Coinbase said it was not aware of any secondary trades actually occurring; the company declined to comment when asked if it was aware of other stock sale conversations in addition to Recode’s reporting.
That hasn’t stopped people from trying. Yet multiple brokers told Recode the problem was that while so many investors are itching to buy shares, so few existing shareholders — be it employees or venture capitalists — are willing to supply them. That makes it hard to price a deal.
One solution could be a tender offer, in which Coinbase authorizes all existing shareholders to sell their stock to a new investor after the company opens its books and gives each shareholder the exact same chance to trade. Some Coinbase investors say the company could launch a tender offer later this year.
Large venture backers of Coinbase include Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ, each of whom has a seat on its board.
The company, founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, allows both consumers and merchants to buy and sell not just bitcoin but also competing digital currencies such as litecoin and ethereum. The portal is attractive to venture capitalists, they say, because it allows them to place a bet on the broader cryptocurrency market as opposed to an investment in a specific blockchain-enabled technology or a specific currency.
The startup, which at one point was the most popular free app in the App Store, is credited with helping the currency appeal to the mainstream buyer. Coinbase now has more brokerage accounts, over 13 million, than the trading giant Charles Schwab.
In recent months, the company has moved into the business of storing digital cash for big institutions like hedge funds. But that wasn’t always a sure thing, according to one person briefed on the plan: The company entered into late-stage talks last year to acquire what’s known as a custody company to manage storage, but the deal fell through.
Snapchat is going to let you share Stories on Twitter and Facebook, in hopes of sparking new growth