Business Insight Zone

As a rule, Hoover’s industry editors don’t include speculation on deals in our profiles on companies. For example, our free synopsis on Dow Jones doesn’t include anything about the talks between the company and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. about a possible buyout. Our reasoning is that, at least so far, the buyout isn’t really headline news, simply because it hasn’t been agreed to, much less formally announced, much less consummated. I mean, lots of deals get talked about without ever coming to pass — or even coming to the public’s attention. In this case, the talks just happen to be public knowledge.

(Note: our fuller coverage, available to subscribers, does include a brief mention of the News Corp. bid, because we can include more text in that format.)

All that to say this: one of the beauties of the blog format is that here we can talk about deal speculation all we want. (My buddy James Bryant did this a little while back with several Bizmology posts on the rumors that were then swirling of a Chrysler buyout.) So, here’s some of the latest word on the street:

• Ford says buyers show interest in Jaguar, Land Rover — Actually, this one is more than a rumor, since it comes straight from Ford’s mouth, but everything is still in the prospective stages. (James was all over this one, too, by the way.) It will probably be months before we know which firm(s) will buy Jaguar and Land Rover.
• The Ever-Ready Lampert Rumor Strikes Safeway — Eddie Lampert made his first billion before he turned 40, and then he got famous in the business world for engineering the deals that folded Kmart into Sears Holdings. Lampert clearly loves retail — his investment firm also holds goodly chunks of AutoNation and AutoZone — so why not Safeway, too?
• Macy’s: In the Buyout Bin? — It’s been a long time since Miracle on 34th Street came out, but the Macy’s name still holds a special place in the psyche of many American shoppers. Unfortunately, the company (until recently called Federated Department Stores) was also, back in the late 1980s, the target of one of the least successful leveraged buyouts anybody cares to remember. Now it may be sold again, and good ol’ KKR may be the buyer.

We’ve had plenty of deals like this — buyouts by well-monied investment firms — in the past couple of years. To make me happy, now all we need is a really massive HP/Compaq-style merger of operations. I mean, a fella can dream, can’t he?

Category: Deals