TheChek News Flow

Outdoor retailer Cabela’s is getting serious about tracking down a buyer.

The 27-store chain — a destination for hunting, fishing and camping enthusiasts — in the past two weeks opened its financial books to rival Bass Pro Shops and other potential suitors, The Post has learned.

Cabela’s has been under fire since October from activist billionaire investor Paul Singer’s Elliott Management hedge fund, which bought an 11 percent stake and pressed management to consider options for boosting the stock price, including a sale.

The Sidney, Neb., company said in December it would explore strategic alternatives but held off distributing confidential financial information to potential buyers until now.

Bass founder John Morris, who controls the closely held Springfield, Mo.-based company, has long wanted to buy his closest rival, sources said.

Cabela’s, in which the founding family holds a sizable stake, generated $3.5 billion in revenue last year, or roughly the same as Bass’s. But Cabela’s is less profitable in part because it still runs like a family-owned business, sources said.

Cabela’s last month started seeking buyers for its credit-card business, which is responsible for about 30 percent of total sales, and expects to have those bids soon.

With those in hand, it wants to see what Bass and other potential bidders such as private-equity firms are willing to offer with and without the credit arm, sources said.

Shares fell 2.3 percent, or $1.07, to $45.48 on Wednesday. Cabela’s did not return calls, while Bass declined to comment.

This is a list of “companies to follow” in German-speaking countries. They are interesting, organic-growth businesses with hidden potential to use M&A now or in the future.

Germany

Holemans, a gravel plant operator, is constructing new facilities

Geta, a vehicle interior producer, is eyeing growth

SolarisBank, a digital banking operator, is considering expansion

Aktivbank, a bank serving midsized companies, is investing in digitization

Pleines Fashion Optik, an eyewear maker, aims to grow its chain

Franz Gaissmaier Baustoffe, a building materials company, is expanding its location

Otto Bock, a prosthetics company, raised EUR 600m

Austria

Danzer, a decorative hardwood producer, plans further investments

Switzerland

Transa, an outdoor equipment maker, took over the Spatz tent range

Holemans builds new facilities

Holemans, operator of the Wesel-based gravel plant Kieswerk Ellerdonk, is constructing new facilities, Rheinische Post reported on 21 March. A new treatment plant has been under construction for about eight weeks, the report noted. It cited Thomas Derksen, the technical director, as saying the gravel plant will be more densely furnished, allowing the new facility to be 17 meters high instead of 26 like the older one. Operations are expected to become more efficient. Construction is proceeding according to the time plan, according to the article. Production is expected to resume in early summer.

Geta aims for more growth

Geta, the Wangen-based vehicle interior producer, is eyeing growth, Schwaebische Zeitung reported on 17 March. The company pursued strong international growth in 2015, founding operations in Russia and Italy, the report said, citing Chief Executive Peter Buhmann. Since 2006, it has had a joint venture serving the Chinese market, while Russia has also been a major focus for its business, the report said. In the coming two years, it plans to establish three further international partnerships. The 30-year-old company mostly produces items for train interiors, the report said. Last year's turnover reached EUR 50m.

SolarisBank targets expansion with banking license

SolarisBank, the Berlin-based digital banking platform operator, is eyeing expansion having obtained a full banking license. The company stated that it has received a license from the German financial supervisory authority (BaFin) and aims to boost the growth of the digital economy. The company has built a modular platform for digital companies, letting them develop financial solutions suited to their requirements. It said it is filling a gap left by traditional banks, which are generally ill-suited to the digital economy. Besides ecommerce businesses, SolarisBank will serve fintech companies aiming to launch new business models and financial technologies. Managing Director Andreas Bittner said partners can pick SolarisBank services like building blocks to create custom solutions. The company was launched in 2015.

Aktivbank invests in digitization

Aktivbank, the Pforzheim-based bank serving midsized companies, is investing in digitization, Pforzheimer Kurier reported on 19 March. The firm boosted its turnover last year by 1.8% to EUR 2.78bn. Manager Hauke Kahlcke was cited as saying the bank is continuing its investment in digitizing business processes in order to provide up-to-date services. He said there will be a focus on electronic billing and a customer-oriented development of the firm's factoring services. The year 2015 already saw Aktivbank making investments in new financial services for midsized companies and their groupings, the report said. Its factoring turnover rose by EUR 41.1m. During 2016, investment will go into IT solutions in building up the corresponding personnel base. Moreover, Aktivbank was cited as saying it may seek to acquire stakes in companies with suitable digitization solutions.

Pleines Fashion Optik plans more outlets

Pleines Fashion Optik, the Korschenbroich-based eyewear maker, aims to expand its chain of outlets, Rheinische Post reported on 4 March. Based largely in Germany's Lower Rhine region, the company aims to grow beyond this while staying inside the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, the report said. Owner R. Dieter Pleines mentioned the major city of Düsseldorf as one place where the company is not yet represented. The 60-year-old family company sees growth potential through internet sales, with which it is complementing its traditional sales, Pleines was cited as saying. The company operates a chain of 17 optical businesses and 15 acoustics ones. Pleines said it is in the top 20 of 12,000 ophthalmic businesses in Germany. The company has 110 employees.

Franz Gaissmaier Baustoffe expands with new property

Franz Gaissmaier Baustoffe, the Tettnang-based building materials company, is expanding its base location by 5,400 square meters, Schwaebische Zeitung reported on 16 March. The report cited Managing Director Peter Gaissmaier as saying the company has acquired land and buildings from the construction components company Aich in Schaeferhof, a part of the city of Tettnang, and will use these for its work. The company has long been seeking expansion of its 10,000 square-meter headquarters, as it wanted more space for storing materials, he said. Aich is relocating operations.

Otto Bock raises EUR 600m with promissory notes

Otto Bock, the Berlin-based prosthetics company, has raised EUR 600m through a promissory note (Schuldschein) issuance, Boersen-Zeitung reported on 17 March. The transaction was arranged by Deutsche Bank and legally advised by White & Case.

Danzer to invest in deck layers

Danzer, the Austrian decorative hardwood producer, plans further investments in its business with deck layers for hardwood flooring, it announced on 3 March. That part of its business saw strong growth in 2015. Chief Executive Hans-Joachim Danzer said EUR 15m will be invested in expanding and upgrading factories in France and the Czech Republic. The year 2016 will see a launch in production of deck layers at the company's US plants, too, the company announcement stated. The company boosted sales in 2015 by 9.5% to EUR 254m. In its first business year located at its new head office in Dornbirn, the company acquired a veneer splicing plant in the Czech Republic. The family-held Danzer has three production plants in Europe, five in the Americas and one in Africa. Its employees number 2,600 worldwide.

Transa to produce acclaimed tent brand

Transa, the Swiss outdoor equipment maker, has taken over production of the acclaimed Spatz tent range, Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported on 22 March. The report said Transa is an investor in a new Wädenswil-based business that will make tents and sleeping bags. This follows an auctioning off of the tent production operation under the Spatz brand name, the report said. According to the article, the entity that will continue the production is a cooperative venture launched in January by Transa and the businessman Olivier Lüthold. The report cited Lüthold as saying there is much business potential in the venture.

The Fed last week pulled back on its economic outlook for 2016 and beyond. In its view (which I share), the US is condemned to a mediocre expansion — or worse — for the foreseeable future.

Because of that, the Fed said it would raise interest rates only twice this year and not the four times it had originally planned.

The upcoming election and, especially, the surprising strength of Donald Trump also make it almost impossible for the Fed to boost rates. If Trump gets elected, the Fed will almost immediately be hit by audits that will reveal lots of secret, sinister things.

So Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her fellow central bankers can’t do anything — like raise the cost of money — that might slow the economy down and give Trump a better shot at winning the presidency.

The prevailing view last week was that the Fed was giving in to the financial markets by cutting back on the number of anticipated rate cuts. And that might be a little bit of the reason.

But the main cause of the “dovish” communiqué from the Fed last Thursday is a realization that business conditions are still weak and that economic statistics that say otherwise are wrong.

If you take the data at face value, the economy grew at around a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter. That’s mediocre, but still twice the rate of expansion at the end of 2015, when the Fed started hiking rates and vowed to raise them four times in 2016.

Logically, the Fed should be twice as enthusiastic about rate hikes now than it was in December, when it raised borrowing costs for the first time in 10 years.

But it wasn’t. Why? Probably because it has a healthy skepticism regarding the economic numbers being spit out by government agencies. And there’s good reason for that doubt.

Take, for instance, the correction recently made to retail sales figures for January by the Census Bureau as well as the more recent sales figures for February. Census is the most useless department of government. That was proven once again when Census revised January sales figures to a loss of 0.4 percent compared with December’s levels. Originally, Census said January’s sales were 0.2 percent higher than December’s levels.

That’s an enormous swing. It’s the difference between consumers who are spending at a reasonable pace and those who have slammed on the brakes.

As I told you back in December, economic figures in early 2016 would be overstating growth when they initially come out because of misleading seasonal adjustments. And that’s what seems to have happened with the retail sales figures.

Census also announced that February’s retail sales dropped another 0.1 percent from January’s levels. Unless the seasonal adjustments were quietly fixed already on that one, the January figure will probably also be revised downward.

Corrections like these are likely to happen across all economic data released in early 2016. So it’s hard for the Fed to justify an interest rate hike if it can’t really tell what the economy is doing.

There’s been a push by some at the Fed to raise rates at the April meeting. And that could happen if oil keeps going up. June is more likely since employment numbers should be deceptively good this spring — giving the Fed the excuse it needs.

But then the Fed gets boxed in by politics, especially because of Trump. Even though it eased policy in a controversial move right before the reelection of President Obama, the Fed will probably use the November election as an excuse to freeze policy until after the vote. It doesn’t want the economy to weaken or, worse, the stock market to tank.

If Trump is the Republican candidate, and that seems more and more likely, then Fed policy could become a captive of politics.

I’ve already told you that I am torn over whether Apple should let the FBI hack into a phone belonging to one of the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists.

I understand the value of a right to privacy, even for scum with murderous intentions and no conscience. But I also appreciate that law enforcement can’t stop terrorism with its hands tied.

Apple has been refusing to cooperate with the FBI, which wants access to the killer’s calls and messages and needs Apple’s help to unlock the phone.

The government has been pressuring the technology company in court, but now the FBI says it might have another way to get into the phone. (Wow, what a shock! Apple doesn’t have all the tech geniuses on its payroll.)

After this week’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, I’m wondering if Apple will soften its position in the name of human decency and common sense.

But what if it doesn’t? What if Apple boss Tim Cook remains the same oblivious, hard-headed tech exec?

And if Cook doesn’t give in, I wonder how long it will be before someone starts talking about boycotting Apple products. Yes, I realize there would be a major uprising among Apple’s fanatical consumers and the world might stop spinning for a second or two.

But ultimately, consumers aren’t the people who companies fear the most. They fear shareholders — and Apple is no different. A shareholder boycott would send a message.

On Saturday night at the legendary restaurant ‘21’ Club, a cluster of singles filed in along with the usual diners. The group, which headed to a large private room to assess each other, had been invited by the high-end app Luxy, which promotes itself as “the No. 1 online millionaire dating site for rich, wealthy and beautiful singles.”

“It is definitely a different level of people than I would normally meet,” says Natalia Asido, a 27-year-old real estate agent from the Upper West Side. “These men are more worldly and intellectual.”

That’s precisely the goal of Luxy, which, since its founding in 2014, has grown to over 600,000 active users. Singles can join the app for free by either submitting their bank accounts or tax statements to prove that they earn more than $200,000 annually, or by being voted in by more than 50 percent of members of the opposite sex. (There is also a $99 per month membership that allows automatic entry.)

The CEO of Luxy started the company because his friends wanted a way to date other successful people. “They were having difficulty finding like-minded women. Under most circumstances, people were just looking for their money,” explains Luxy co-founder Andrew Ma, 29, who lives in Hoboken, NJ.

Luxy members aren’t alone in wanting to date within their tax brackets. A recent study from Robert D. Mare, a sociology professor at UCLA, found that the number of Americans pairing with mates from similar socioeconomic backgrounds is at its highest since 1900. Even Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez has seemingly given up his model-seducing ways in favor of striking up a romance with Anne Wojcicki, the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “He finds her interesting, inspirational and very smart,” a source recently told The Post’s Page Six. Wojcicki is said to be worth billions; Rodriguez, $300 million.

It’s that kind of thinking that seems to be motivating wealthy men to use the app.

“I joined Luxy because I meet beautiful women who are models, but I can’t have deep intellectual conversations with them,” says Omar, a 28-year-old hospitality entrepreneur from Midtown, who makes $500,000 a year and asked that his last name not be used for professional reasons.

“There was once a girl who said, ‘Oh, it’s my birthday, come to this club.’ I thought I was a guest, but then the manager came over and asked me what kind of Champagne I wanted to order, and I was suddenly expected to pay. It’s not like I minded paying, but it bothered me that she expected it.”

Guests at the ‘21’ Club event, who paid $125 each to attend, were served caviar canapés, smoked salmon and roast beef while they sipped on wine. Julie Cade, a 60-year-old divorcée who works for a healthcare company, flew in from Detroit. After three months on Luxy, she’s already arranging to meet with two potential suitors: one from Long Beach, Calif., and another from Houston.

But dating within this rarified circle comes with its own problems: Two of the men had already dated two of the women at the mixer. Upon spotting Yelena Sukhova, an attractive 26-year-old real estate agent who lives on the Upper East Side, one turned on his heels.

Real estate agent Asido has similar goals: “It’s not just about money. I am Ukrainian, I have Canadian citizenship, I was raised in Argentina and I speak five languages. It’s about being a gentleman and knowing how to carry yourself.”

And while Luxy boasts about its exclusivity, Sukhova notes the service does have its drawbacks. “While they said the app is for millionaires, really anyone who makes $200,000 can join,” she says.

In the end, Omar left with another guy.

“We went to have a drink,’’ he says. “He was in finance and we talk the same language, so we can help each other out.”

“Whether you believe Gustavo was innocent or guilty, and that has yet to be determined in a court of law, in the court of public opinion, he has been found guilty,” Sorrell said at an ad-industry gathering on Wednesday.

Martinez stepped down as chairman and chief executive of the WPP-owned agency last Friday, a week after he was slapped with a suit by JWT’s longtime global chief communications officer, Erin Johnson.

Sorrell said WPP did not force Martinez to resign and that they arrived at the mutual decision that it was simply “in the interest of the company, of its clients, of its people.”

Johnson’s suit accused Martinez of making an endless stream of sexist and racist comments, including joking that he wanted to rape her in the bathroom.

He also griped that there were too many “f- -king” Jews in Westchester County and called black people “monkeys,” the suit alleges.

Martinez strongly denies the allegations.

Johnson’s suit has sparked soul-searching along Madison Avenue, where ad agencies have been trying to shed their “Mad Men” reputations and encourage diversity.

Talk of the suit and its handling dominated the 4A’s Transformation 2016 conference in Miami, where Sorrell spoke via video feed.

A day earlier, Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Lévy suggested that the situation at JWT was an isolated incident.

“I don’t believe what happened at JWT is exemplary of what is happening in our industry,” Lévy said. “It is a one-time mistake, a huge mistake, but it’s not a fair representation of the industry.”

That did not sit well with some women in the ad business, who said they had encountered sexism first hand.

Sorrell also took the opportunity to take a jab at one of WPP’s biggest rivals.

“He [Lévy] has a habit of ignoring the facts and not letting the facts get in the way of an argument,” he said.

WPP’s lawyers are still probing the allegations in Johnson’s suit, while also fighting to keep a video that purportedly shows Martinez making alleged racist comments from being made public as part of her amended complaint.

24-MAR-2016 10:00:35

PARIS, 24 mars (Reuters) - Le ministère de l'Economie aurait accepté que Bouygues BOUY.PA prenne 12% du capital d'Orange ORAN.PA en échange de l'apport de Bouygues Telecom à l'opérateur historique, lit-on jeudi sur le site de BFM Business. http://bit.ly/25nsMfJ

"Selon nos informations, l'État, qui détient 23% d'Orange, vient tout juste d'assouplir sa position pour se rapprocher des exigences de Martin Bouygues", écrit BFM Business.

"Bercy aurait accepté que Bouygues prenne 12% du capital d’Orange au moment du rachat, alors que le ministère militait jusqu'à présent pour une participation maximum de 9% additionnée d'une clause empêchant Bouygues de monter davantage", ajoute-t-il, sans citer de sources.

Emmanuel Macron, le ministre de l'Économie, reçoit ce jeudi à 15h00 le PDG d’Orange, Stéphane Richard, puis à 17h00 Martin Bouygues, PDG de Bouygues.

Bercy n'a pas fait de commentaire sur ces informations.