€10B worth of participation: What could be in Play?
We don’t have a crystal ball but some facts are obvious: when Mr. MACRON was the Minister of Economy & Finance (August 2014 till August 2016), he attempted to act on companies in which the French State was a shareholder. He tried to pass a law allowing the listing of Francaise des Jeux that was rebuffed by the Ministry of Budget for tax reasons, he increased the French stake in Renault from 15% to 20% and enforced the “Florange” law which grants double voting rights on shares registered for more than 2 years.
Our view for what could happen regarding the French state stake holdings, either held directly or through the BPI / CDC, in the listed companies presented on the right is that things could happen for sure but not automatically full take over on the companies.
Remember that even if Mr. MACRON has been elected on the basis to change the French politics, as a Minister he implemented the Macron Law that was passed using the 49.3 procedure, this law has been heavily criticized by the French unions and now as the French President, he’s keen to accelerate on French working rules that would give more flexibility to the French system but with strong warnings from the unions that he should not act independently and should negotiate.
That’s why in the list of participations, we have decided to exclude the ones which seem to be too sensible: EdF (partially), Areva (just restructured), CNP (strong links with the CDC and only 1% stake seems irrelevant), Dexia, Airbus (shareholder pact with Germany & Spain), Eramet (French presence in New Caledonia), Safran & Thales ( Safran buying Zodiac at this time and we are the view that this just a 1st step to further consolidation with Thales later on).
This leave in the game:
- ADP: Partial/total sale with a long administrative process & auction
- AF-KLM: Restructuring story with the mandatory 50% European shareholder level.
- Engie: 111m Shares ABB on 5 Sept.2017 still leaves room for another placing due to double voting rights.
- Orange: 9.56% easily feasible maintaining 13.45% shareholding level with double voting rights.
- Renault: 4.73% shares acquired in 2016 has always been considered as a financial participation.
- Peugeot: Restructuring is over and would represent a huge profit without being too much socially sensible
- Francaise des Jeux (national lottery) for an IPO.
In this note, we highlight the legal framework in France regarding the way the French State have to follow regulation to sell its participations in private or listed companies with the APE & CPT being the center of the process but also other regulatory bodies that might be involved in the process.
Henri DUMENY
Senior Event Driven Analyst
Makor Securities London Ltd
7 Savile RowLondon
W1S 3PE
United Kingdom
Tel: +442072905795
This message has been sent by Makor Securities London Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the FCA (625054). This message is for professional clients and eligible counterparties only, not intended for "retail clients". The information contained in this message is confidential and is for the exclusive use of the intended recipient. If you receive this message in error please inform us and delete all copies of it. The information is not intended as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial instrument. All comments and statements are to be considered the opinions of the author not the Company and are not intended to be relied upon. We cannot guarantee that this message or any attachments are virus free and accept no liability for any viruses or the consequences thereof.
IBM and Stellar Are Launching Blockchain Banking Across Multiple Countries
In a breakthrough for payments technology, IBM and a network of banks have begun using digital currency and blockchain software to move money across borders throughout the South Pacific.
The significance of the news, which IBM announced on Monday, is that merchants and consumers will be able to send money to another country in near real-time, accelerating a payments process that typically takes days.
The banking network includes “12 currency corridors” that encompass Australia and New Zealand, as well as smaller countries like Fiji and Tonga. It will reportedly process up to 60 percent of all cross-border payments in the South Pacific’s retail foreign exchange corridors by early next year.
The news also comes as an important validation of blockchain technology, which has long promised enormous efficiencies for the financial sector, but has been slow to move from the concept stage to the real world.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
Blockchain, which relies on a disparate network of computers to create an indelible, tamper-proof record of transactions, is most famously associated with the digital currency bitcoin. But it can be used in many other applications such as tracking shipments or, as in this case, to record a series of cross-border transactions.
As an example, IBM said a farmer in Samoa will soon be able to contract with a buyer in Indonesia, and use the blockchain to record everything from the farmer’s collateral to letters of credit to payment.
“This is the next step in the evolution of blockchain technology. It’s live money moving around a network,” Jesse Lund, IBM’s VP of Blockchain, told Fortune.
Digital Currency is Key
The new blockchain banking process is also notable because the banks will initially rely on a bitcoin-like digital currency, known as Lumens, to facilitate the cross border payments.
Currently, banks arrange such payments by maintaining foreign accounts in a local currency (so-called nostro accounts), and then debiting the accounts as required—a process that is both slow and ties up capital.
Under the new blockchain arrangement, banks will conduct the transactions using Lumens, and then rely on local market makers to convert the Lumens into local fiat currency. The Lumens are created by a non-profit company called Stellar, founded a Jed McCaleb, a well known figure in the payments and crypto-currency world.
Both Stellar and IBM are part of a project called Hyperledger Fabric, which is building open source blockchain tools to support payment infrastructures.
According to Lund, though, the banks use of Stellar’s digital currency is likely to be temporary. He predicts that, in the next year, central banks will begin issuing digital currencies of their own, and that these will become an integral part of blockchain-based money transfers.
The IBM-backed blockchain project comes at a time when other companies are creating efficient new ways to conduct global money transfers. These include BitPesa, which relies on the bitcoin network to replace traditional wire transfers between merchants in Africa, and TransferWise, which provides an inexpensive way for consumers to obtain foreign currencies.
Carrefour has appointed former Fnac Darty chief financial officer Matthieu Malige as its new CFO, three months after its chief executive made the same move.
Mr Malige spent eight years at Carrefour, the world’s second largest retailer by revenues, between 2003 and 2011. He then jumped ship to Fnac, arriving in the same year that Alexandre Bompard took up the reins of the retail chain as chief executive. Mr Bompard now heads up Carrefour, after joining from Fnac Darty in July.
Mr Malige replaces Pierre Jean Sivignon, who is stepping down as CFO because of “personal difficulties,” and will become an adviser to Mr Bompard, Carrefour said on Monday.
Mr Malige “will be closely associated with the strategic reflections on [Carrefour's] development,” as well as heading up the group’s finance function the statement said.
Mr Bompard, who has yet to unveil his strategy, is facing several key challenges, including accelerating Carrefour’s digital transformation, raising its profitability and injecting new life into the group’s hypermarkets, notably in its home market of France.
Mr Malige, who begun his career at Lazard investment bank, previously held a string of senior management positions at Carrefour.
Carrefour will report its sales figures for the third quarter on Wednesday.
Industrial companies want to build their own 5G networks
In setting up the networks for the fifth mobile generation (5G), leading industrial companies seem to want to build "private 5G networks". The reason is the poor mobile radio coverage in rural regions.
Bonn Leading industrial companies in Germany do not want to rely on the three mobile telephony operators Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica according to a report of the "Wirtschaftswoche" during the construction of the networks for the fifth mobile generation (5G). The Central Association of the Electrical Engineering and Electronics Industry (ZVEI) calls on the Federal Network Agency to allow its members to build their own "private 5G networks" in factories, the magazine reported on Thursday.
"We do not want to be dependent on the infrastructure of a certain network operator in the industrial 5G deployment in our factories", explained the ZVEI of the magazine. The fifth generation of mobile telephony is to become the technical backbone of the Internet of Things and is regarded as a prerequisite for digitization of production, which is described as "Industry 4.0".
According to the report, CEOs point to the poor mobile coverage in rural regions and doubt that the network operators can guarantee a stable 5G supply to the production halls quickly enough. However, the cable-free networking of the machine parks is indispensable for complete coverage. The industrial companies, which are part of the ZVEI, therefore want to set up their own company-internal 5G networks. The Federal Network Agency had asked the German economy to register their demand for radio frequencies for the 5G networks. The Federal Republic of Germany is the first European state to award the frequencies required for 5G in the next year.
Mobile phone companies appear to be providing your number and location to anyone who pays
You may remember that last year, Verizon (which owns Oath, which owns TechCrunch) was punished by the FCC for injecting information into its subscribers’ traffic that allowed them to be tracked without their consent. That practice appears to be alive and well despite being disallowed in a ruling last March: companies appear to be able to request your number, location, and other details from your mobile provider quite easily.
The possibility was discovered by Philip Neustrom, co-founder of Shotwell Labs, who documented it in a blog post earlier this week. He found a pair of websites which, if visited from a mobile data connection, report back in no time with numerous details: full name, billing zip code, current location (as inferred from cell tower data), and more. (Others found the same thing with slightly different results depending on carrier, but the demo sites were taken down before I could try it myself.)
It appears to be similar to the Unique Identifier Header used by Verizon. The UIDH was appended to HTTP requests made by Verizon customers, allowing websites they visited to see their location, billing data and so on (if they paid Verizon for the privilege, naturally). The practice, in common use by carriers for a decade or more, was highlighted in the last few years and eventually the FCC required Verizon (and by extension other mobile providers) to get positive consent before implementing.
Now, this is not to say that the whole thing is some huge scam: that data could be very useful for, for instance, an administrator who wants to be sure that an employee’s phone is actually in the location their IP seems to indicate. Why bother with a text-based one time password if a service can verify you’re you by querying your mobile provider? It’s at least a reasonable possibility.
And that’s what companies like Payfone and Danal are using it for; furthermore, users of their services would by definition be opting into this kind of tracking, so there’s no problem there.
I asked Payfone CEO Rodger Desai for a little clarification. He wrote back in an email:
There is a very rigorous framework of security and data privacy consent. The main issue is that with all the legitimate mobile change events fraudsters get in… For example, if you download a mobile banking app today, the bank is not sure if it is you on your new phone or someone acting as you – the fraudster only needs your bank password. PC techniques like certificates and device printing don’t work well – since it is a new phone.
But as Neustrom found out, mobile providers don’t appear to be working very hard to verify that consent. Both sites provide demos of their functionality, pinging mobile providers for data and presenting it to you.
Of course, if you want the demo to work, you kind of opt into the tracking as well. But where’s the text or email from the mobile provider asking you for verification? It seems that this kind of request could be made fraudulently by many means, since the providers don’t verify them in any way other than a few programmatic ones (matching IPs, etc).
Without rigorous consent standards, mobile companies may as well be selling the data indiscriminately the same way they were before advocacy groups took them to task for it. For now there doesn’t appear to be a way to officially opt out — but there also doesn’t appear to be a clear and present danger, such as an obvious scammer or wholesaler using this technique.
I’ve asked T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon whether they participate in this kind of program, providing subscriber details to anyone who pays — and who, in turn, may provide to to others. I’ve also asked the FCC if this practice is of concern to them. I’ll update this post if I hear back.
Abertis/Atlantia: ACS chairman offers Criteria mega dividend - reported rumor
ACS (BME:ACS), the construction company that is preparing to counter the Italian toll-road operator Atlantia’s(BIT:ATL) offer for its Spanish rival Abertis (BME:ABE), has offered Abertis main shareholder Criteria CaixaCorp a mega dividend, reported El Confidencial.
ACS chairman and main shareholder Florentino Perez met Criteria’s chairman Isidre Faine last week to offer a generous dividend in exchange of its support, the unsourced online Spanish-language report said. After the meeting Perez told the institutional funds that finance ACS’ bid that the encounter was satisfactory, El Confidencial said.
ACS’ board meets this Wednesday 18 October to approve the counter offer, valued at least EUR 17bn, the report went on to say. Criteria holds 22.5% of Abertis, so should it accept to swap it for a stake in the company resulting from a merger of Abertis with ACS’s listed German unit Hochtief (HOTG:DE), ACS will save about EUR 4bn, the report noted.
El Confidencial cited other sources as saying that Faine has also been urged by the Spanish government to back ACS’s offer.
Criteria has always intended to retain a stake in Abertis in order to finance its Fundación Bancaria ‘la Caixa’, a non-profit entity that raises EUR 500m a year from Criteria’s industrial holdings, the item noted.
ACS’ board meets this Wednesday 18 October to approve the counter offer, valued at least EUR 17bn, the report went on to say. Criteria holds 22.5% of Abertis, so should it accept to swap it for a stake in the company resulting from a merger of Abertis with ACS’s listed German unit Hochtief (HOTG:DE), ACS will save about EUR 4bn, the report noted.
El Confidencial cited other sources as saying that Faine has also been urged by the Spanish government to back ACS’s offer.
Criteria has always intended to retain a stake in Abertis in order to finance its Fundación Bancaria ‘la Caixa’, a non-profit entity that raises EUR 500m a year from Criteria’s industrial holdings, the item noted.
Glencore, Bunge in Standstill Agreement
The deal prevents Glencore from making any hostile bid until early next year
Glencore GLNCY 3.14% PLC has a standstill agreement that temporarily prevents it from making a hostile bid for Bunge Ltd. BG 6.84% , according to people familiar with the matter, raising the possibility Glencore will renew its effort to acquire the grain trader.
Glencore in May confirmed it had approached Bunge about a takeover that would expand the Swiss commodity trader’s reach in global agricultural markets at a time when low crop prices have forced farming concerns to seek scale through mergers. Glencore said at the time that discussions might or might not ensue.
Since then, investors have sought clues as to whether Glencore and its deal-hungry chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, would follow through on the approach, but the companies have said little in public. Given Bunge’s current market value, a deal for the company would likely carry a price tag well over $10 billion.
Glencore and Bunge had originally been exploring a smaller deal, a person familiar with the matter said this week. In order to gain access to confidential information, Glencore agreed to the standstill and then sounded out Bunge on the idea of a full takeover. The standstill, which expires early next year, for now prevents Glencore from buying stock in Bunge or from making any public, unsolicited approach.
The existence of the agreement—previously unreported—raises the possibility Glencore is biding its time before making another approach, though it is unclear what, if any, its plans may be.
In August, an analyst asked Mr. Glasenberg on a conference call if Glencore would only pursue an agricultural deal on friendly terms. “Would we go friendly or hostile? I suppose we cannot really comment on that,” Mr. Glasenberg said.
A deal with Bunge would bring Glencore one of the most expansive networks of grain-shipping and processing facilities in North and South America. It would represent a long-term bet on demand for crop trading with the global population expected to hit 9.8 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations.
Bunge, based in White Plains, N.Y., had a market value of about $9.5 billion Friday morning before The Wall Street Journal reported on the standstill agreement. The shares rose 6.8% to close at $72.49 on the news.
The company, which traces its roots to a Dutch firm founded in 1818, went public in 2001 and expanded on the back of a commodity boom between 2007 and 2013.
Bunge is among the world’s biggest dealers in basic foodstuffs such as soybeans, corn and wheat. Alongside rivals like Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Louis Dreyfus Co., Bunge buys crops from farmers and grain elevators, sells them to food companies and livestock operations, and processes them into products like vegetable oil and flour.
In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Glencore had approached Bunge about combining. Glencore later confirmed that its agriculture unit “made an informal approach to Bunge…regarding a possible consensual business combination.”
Bunge’s quarterly profits subsequently declined and its shares sank. After surging nearly 20% on news of the possible deal, the shares have given back all the gain and then some.
Bunge and other grain traders have struggled against low crop prices that have left farmers reluctant to sell their crops—a factor Bunge officials in August said contributed to a 33% drop in second-quarter profit. Agricultural-commodity prices generally have lingered at low levels due to a succession of bumper harvests beginning in 2013.
Rising grain stockpiles also have eased concerns over potential supply shocks, leaving agricultural markets less volatile. That makes it harder for companies like Bunge to profit through trading.
OHL analyses EUR 2bn offer from IFM for OHL Concesiones
Obrascon Huarte Lain [BME: OHL] is analysing an offer worth more than EUR 2bn from the Australian fund IFM Global InfrastructureFund for 100% of its concessions unit OHL Concesiones, reported El Mundo. According to the Spanish-language paper, which cited sources close to the company, OHL will respond to the offer within the next few days.
Previous reports had stated that OHL was considering selling 25% to 40% of its concessions business, the report noted.
IFM is particularly interested in OHL’s assets in Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia, the report noted.
Previous reports had stated that OHL was considering selling 25% to 40% of its concessions business, the report noted.
IFM is particularly interested in OHL’s assets in Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia, the report noted.
Porsche launches a car subscription service
The pilot program starts in the Atlanta area starting at $2,000 per month
Link to article : http://bit.ly/2yotzSE
Porsche will start a “subscription service” for customers that could give them access to a number of their sports cars and SUVs, from $2,000 per month.
Porsche Passport will start in November in Atlanta, the German company’s North American affiliate announced Tuesday. The automaker calls it a “white-glove” service intended to give users app-driven access to a different Porsche on a flexible schedule.
The pilot program being rolled out in metro Atlanta first is made possible through Clutch Technologies, LLC, which is part of the company’s Strategy 2025 that wants to cater to, “customers’ desire to experience our sports cars,” Porsche Cars North America president and CEO Klaus Zellmer said in a news release. Expansion into other markets will be determined after feedback from Atlanta customers, a company spokesperson told The Verge on Tuesday.
A $2,000-per-month Porsche Passport membership would give customers access to models such as the 718 Boxster, the 718 Cayman S, and six other Porsche models; the more expensive $3,000-per-month plan gives a user the ability to drive one of 22 models, such as a Cayenne E-Hybrid.
A subscription to Porsche Passport covers vehicle tax and registration, insurance, maintenance, and detailing. There is a $500 activation fee at first and a credit check, but Apple iOS and Android users can then download the app and schedule same-day or future vehicle exchanges through the Porsche Passport app.
Porsche Passport now stands between fellow Volkswagen Group’s Audi on Demand service that currently operates in San Francisco as sort of a concierge rental service, as well as the subscription plan Care By Volvo. The Swedish automaker plans to debut that early next year with the new XC40 SUV, which will bundle insurance, maintenance, and washing into one flat fee with the car.
And for Porsche’s well-heeled customers, jumping into a different Porsche every day may seem like a perfect fit.