Friday High Five – what’s been in the news this week
Someone I used to work with once notoriously said that he was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, as long as they paid their fair share of tax.
Maybe you could extend that notion this week, with the added idea that – “and they also invest their money into a regional investment fund that will back other businesses like theirs.”
I took a lot from my post-Easter break chat to Gary Tipper, the founder of regional private equity success story, Palatine. It’s significant that ESG is still firmly on the agenda as he closed the fundraising at £254m for the fifth buyout fund, but the support from people who have seen enough to return their capital for more must have been hugely encouraging.
Similarly, Seneca selling the trade finance arm for a chunky £40m sends a strong signal to anyone contemplating a sale into a buy-and-build operation. Invest in something a bit different. In their case it was a strong proposition backed up by technology.
Elsewhere, Matthew Moulding must be looking at the valuations of Science in Sport, Applied Nutrition and others, and be wondering why the rest of the stock market can’t see the value in the business, and why MyProtein is attracting bids from an old mate that undervalued the core of THG’s Nutrition division by such a huge amount.
The statement from THG was supposedly in response to “media speculation,” so once again it’s our fault. But, though I have multiple alerts set up using all manner of scanning tools, I didn’t find anything of any note discussing the £400m plus bid from Iain McDonald’s Selkirk Group. If it was intended to boost the flagging share price, it failed.
Next week THG will be releasing results. Maybe that’s when he will have his opportunity to see the corner turn.
Apart from the eye-catching shareholders register, the jaw dropping number in our coverage of the collapse and phoenix of Wakelet was the income line in the sale document. £9k. Not a week, not a month, but a year.
This week’s best read story was about a buyout by management of household goods retailer, Lakeland. How much they, and backer Hilco, could do with a celebrity endorsement of the kind Delia Smith gave the business several years ago when she lauded an omelette pan that they had exclusive rights to.
Have an intensely relaxing weekend.
