logo-loader

Trending: Revlon buys Elizabeth Arden while Tesco sells Dobbies

Published: 07:09 17 Jun 2016 EDT

a photo of a large diamond

It’s been a busy day of buying and selling for some of the big players today.

We start with the news that Tesco PLC (LON:TSCO) has sold its garden centre chain Dobbies as the retailer continues to slim down in an effort to revitalise its sales.

Dobbies has been sold to a group of investors led by Midlothian Capital Partners and Hattington Capital for £217mln.

Today’s news comes after Tesco sold its Giraffe restaurant chain and its Turkish business last week.

Tesco bought Dobbies back in 2007 for around £150mln, and author Ian Fraser reckons today's deal is a good one for the UK supermarket giant…

 

Moving on from a sale to an acquisition now, as Revlon Inc (NYSE:REV) has agreed a deal to buy fellow cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden, Inc. (NASDAQ:RDEN) for US$870mln (£609mln).

The veteran cosmetics firm will pay $US14 per share for Elizabeth Arden which represents a 50% premium to the luxury skincare brand’s closing price of US$9.31 yesterday.

Revlon has said that it expects the combined company to have sales of around US$3bln.

It hopes the deal will help to expand its global footprint and benefit from Elizabeth Arden’s presence in fast-growing markets such as Asia-Pacific.

In other news, one of the largest diamonds ever to come out of Russia has just been found AK Alrosa PAO’s (MCX:ALRS) Nyurbinsly open pit mine.

Alrosa – the world’s biggest diamond producer by volume – describes the 241 carat stone as ‘translucent with a grey hue’.

The find is one of a number of sizeable to be recovered in recent years.

The 1,111 carat Lesedi La Rona – discovered at Lucara Diamond Corp’s (TSE:LUC) Karowe mine in Botswana – goes on sale in a couple of weeks, with some experts estimating that it could sell for in excess of £50mln.

And finally, HSBC (LON:HSBC) has drawn a line under its 14-year legal battle with former Household International shareholders.

The lawsuit alleged that executives of Householder International – acquired by the bank in 2003 – misled investors by hiding its bad lending practices.

HSBC reached a deal that will see it pay a record US$1.6bln to resolve the lawsuit shortly before a second jury trial was due to get underway in Chicago.

ARway.ai announces multiple new SaaS developer contracts in both the United...

ARway.ai (CSE:ARWY, OTCQB:ARWYF) Chief Executive Officer Evan Gappelberg joined Steve Darling from Proactive to announce multiple new SaaS developer sign-ups for its augmented reality experience platform, focusing on AR indoor navigation. These partnerships represent significant milestones in...

59 minutes ago