Innovate UK CEO, Indro Mukerjee, has unveiled the UK Agri-Tech Centre, the UK’s largest agri-tech organisation responsible for driving innovation in the sector. The Agri-Tech Centres merging are Agricultural Engineering, Precision and Innovation Centre (Agri-EPI), Crop Health and Protection (CHAP) and the Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL).

Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK said:

As the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK supports innovative businesses on their growth journeys. Our plans to merge these centres and work with them to develop a proposal for a new Agri-tech Catapult will have a transformational impact on the UK, creating an excellent environment to start and grow innovative agri-tech businesses. This is and will be an important area for Innovate UK’s work.

INNOVATE UK

On February 5, 2024 language services providers (LSPs) Jonckers and Acclaro announced that the companies have merged, effective February 1, 2024. Investment firm Mayfair Equity Partners became a majority stakeholder in Jonckers in 2023, giving the company a solid basis for a growth strategy which, according to Jonckers’ CEO, Silke Zschweigert, includes both organic growth and growth through M&A. Zschweigert commented that Jonckers’ WordsOnline platform, combined with human specialists, “can translate content five times faster at half the cost of traditional translation services”.

SLATOR

NorthStandard, formed through the merger of the North of England P&I Association and the Standard Club of London, becomes one of the world’s top providers of mutual marine cover. With over 390 million gross tonnage of owned and chartered tonnage on its books, the new entity consolidates annual premiums of around US$800 million, employs over 700 people and brings together over 300 years of P&I heritage.

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

The merger of shipping and marine insurers North P&I and Standard Club has moved a step forward after members of both mutuals voted in favour of the plans.

It paves the way for the creation of NorthStandard, which will have a combined workforce of 700, joint premium income of around $750m (£595.8m), assets of $2bn (£1.58bn) and will insure ships equivalent to 270m gross tonnes.

BUSINESS LIVE

Wendy Clark, the global CEO of Dentsu International, is about one-third of the way through cutting the global advertising group's brands to six from 160, and stripping away layers of management in the process. “We are simplifying our organisation and optimising our brand portfolio,” says Clark. In a briefing of market analysts, she says Dentsu had a strong June quarter, posting a record 17% organic growth rate. 

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ProPharma Group, a portfolio company of Odyssey Investment Partners, has acquired Diamond Pharma Services. As an award-winning team of regulatory experts with deep subject matter knowledge for handling challenging therapeutic classes, Diamond’s team will help accelerate the value ProPharma Group brings in delivering regulatory science to companies working on cutting-edge therapeutics with ProPharma Group’s ATMPs/Cell and Gene Therapy Center of Excellence.

PRIVATE EQUITY WIRE

Diamond Pharma Services Acquires PharmaCentral to Strengthen Pharmacovigilance Division

Acquisition expands presence in Europe and enhances senior-level expertise

Diamond Pharma Services, a leading technical services and regulatory affairs consulting group, today announced its pharmacovigilance division, Diamond PV Services, has acquired PharmaCentral, an innovative pharmacovigilance services and medical affairs business based in Dublin, Ireland. The acquisition will expand Diamond’s presence in Europe and enhance the senior-level expertise within its pharmacovigilance team.

PharmaCentral offers a wide range of pharmacovigilance consultancy services, based on a wealth of experience in pharmacovigilance and medical affairs in both pharma and CRO environments. The acquisition of PharmaCentral forms part of Diamond’s growth strategy for its pharmacovigilance division, which has achieved a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in revenues of 27% over the last three years. This rapid expansion of Diamond’s pharmacovigilance senior level team is required to support clients from Diamond’s regulatory affairs business in specialist areas such as gene and cell therapies.

BUSINESS WIRE

The London Stock Exchange Group has agreed to buy data provider Refinitiv for $27bn, sealing a deal that will turn it into a global markets and information powerhouse to rival Michael Bloomberg’s financial data empire. The chief executive of the LSE said he was confident the business would meet the high expectations set by investors, who have sent shares in the company up 24 per cent since last weekend. “We have a lot of confidence in our ability to generate the targeted growth rates of this business . . . and in the importance of data in financial markets and capital markets,” said David Schwimmer, an American who took over the LSE after leaving Goldman Sachs last year. By acquiring Refinitiv, which is best known for its Eikon desktop terminals, the LSE completes a multiyear effort to become less dependent on transaction-based revenues and will pick up a series of financial data assets that will further reduce its reliance on its UK and European business.

FT Article

The London Stock Exchange Group could rebrand itself as International Data Inc. In a decade, the company has gone from a local equities market to global information and services business. A deal to buy Citi’s bond index and analytics platform represents another bite of the cherry. Amid the seemingly unstoppable popularity of data-driven investment, the $685m (£530m) cash deal makes sense. Unlike LSE’s failed merger with Deutsche Börse, the purchase is unlikely to draw political heat. 

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Mondelez has announced plans to buy an 80 per cent stake in Vietnamese snack company Kinh Do for $370m as the global snacks company seeks to expand its presence in the fast-growing Asian market. Tim Cofer, president for Asia-Pacific and eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, said the acquisition would allow Mondelez to expand its relatively small Vietnamese business by using Kinh Do’s well-established distribution network.

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Aviva said it had completed more than 90 per cent of the wide-ranging disposal plan the UK insurer launched in the summer to shore up its balance sheet after it raised a further £152m in cash by selling its Malaysian joint venture, CIMB-Aviva. Canada’s Sun Life Financial and Khazanah, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, agreed on Thursday to buy the business from Aviva and its joint venture partner, the lender CIMB. The Malaysia disposal means Aviva is on track to raise £2.5bn from a series of deals around the globe in recent months, including the sale last week of its remaining stake in Amsterdam-listed Delta Lloyd.

FT Article

San Miguel, purveyor of one of Southeast Asia's oldest and most popular beers, is not your typical food and beverage company. Over the past two years, the group has ventured outside its comfort zone of drinks, processed foods and packaging, to make acquisitions in power, mining and tollways. The resolve of Chief Executive Eduardo Cojuangco to diversify into heavy industry and infrastructure was further underscored on Thursday with the acquisition of Exxon Mobil's downstream business in Malaysia for US$610m.

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Standard Chartered and Australia’s ANZ are close to buying part of RBS’s Asian banking assets in a deal that could be announced as early as next week. RBS, which reports first-half results on Friday, has been trying to sell retail assets that include 170 branches, with 28 in India and 13 in China, as it tries to shrink its balance sheet. StanChart has been interested in acquiring RBS units being sold in China, India and Malaysia, while ANZ is closing in on acquiring assets in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. The assets are expected to fetch about $1bn-$1.5bn (£600m- £900m) for the stricken UK lender.

FT Article

Tui and First Choice Holidays are to merge their tour operating business to create Europe's largest tour operator.

The deal comes just a month after MyTravel and Thomas Cook agreed to merge their operations and if completed would see Europe's four leading tour operators consolidate into two. The German-based operator, whose brands include Thomson Holidays of the UK and the European Airtours, is to take a 51 per cent stake in a business to be called Tui Travel.

FT Article

As private equity bid fests go, this was a big one - and by all accounts it went down to the wire. Clear Channel Communications, the advertising and radio group, announced on Wednesday that a buyout group led by Thomas H Lee Partners and Bain Capital will pay $26.7bn to take the business over. That includes taking on $8bn of debt and equates to $37.60 a share in cash.

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Consolidation normally holds out the prospect of improved profitability. The opposite is true in the UK mortgage market. Nationwide's acquisition of Portman propels the combined building society into the number two slot in the UK mortgage market with a share of 11 per cent. Because both are mutuals, any excess profits are returned to members in the form of lower pricing, which means the new, larger entity could intensify downward pressure on pricing. They are happy to live with a return on equity a few percentage points lower than their bank competitors. 

FT Article

When Richard Baker told investors in March that he was determined “to put the chemist back in Boots”, no-one had an inkling that a £7bn merger was the way the softly spoken chief executive intended to do it. But the tie-up between Boots and Alliance UniChem will achieve just that – and a lot more. Overnight, the proposed ‘merger of equals’ will make Boots, a retail chain of 1,400 health and beauty stores in the UK, a serious operator in the pan-European pharmaceutical wholesale and retail market.

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Ono and its private equity partners are thought to be closer to securing a deal to buy the fixed-line and cable assets of fellow Spanish telecom business Auna.

The proposed deal would be worth about €2.5bn ($3bn), including debt.

The proposed acquisition is central to the related but much larger sale of Auna's mobile phone business, Amena.

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