SCU - Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: Marsh McLennan Reaches Deal For Honan Insurance

2023-08-21 06:47:41 ET

Summary

• Marsh & McLennan to acquire Australia's Honan Insurance Group for about $448 million.
• Hedge fund investors, including Bill Ackman and Boaz Weinstein, make rival offer to buy Sculptor Capital for $12/share.
• Amazon restarts shipping service, adding competitive pressure for FedEx and UPS.

Listen below or on the go on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Marsh & McLennan ( MMC ) reaches $450M deal for Australia's Honan Insurance. (00:32) Bill Ackman, Boaz Weinstein reportedly make rival $12/share offer for Sculptor Capital (SCU). (00:59) Shipping wars: Amazon ( AMZN ) restarts service that competes with FedEx ( FDX ) and UPS. (2:02)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

Marsh & McLennan (NYSE: MMC ) unit Marsh has agreed to acquire Australia's Honan Insurance Group.

According to a Bloomberg report , which cited people familiar with the matter, the deal includes an 80% stake held by TA Associates, Honan's private equity owner.

The deal is valued at about A$700 million ($448 million) and is expected to be complete later this year.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A group of hedge fund investors have made a rival offer to buy hedge fund Sculptor Capital Management for $12/share, topping a deal inked last month for $11.15 a share.

According to a WSJ report on Sunday, which cited people familiar with the matter, the group, which includes Boaz Weinstein, Bill Ackman and Avenue Capital's Marc Lasry, presented an offer during the sales process and has now increased its bid to $12 a share.

Financing for their offer is expected to come from their personal funds, not from their firms' cash.

The revised offer comes after a group of Sculptor Capital (NYSE: SCU ) shareholders said Wednesday that the company's agreement to be sold to Rithm Capital (NYSE: RITM ) for $639 million "substantially undervalues" the fund.

The sale to Rithm is expected to close in Q4.

However, if the Weinstein-led group succeeds in winning the bid for Sculptor (SCU), they are expected to install new management, while the Rithm deal would leave current management.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN ) has restarted a shipping service it paused in the early days of the pandemic in a development that could add competitive pressure for FedEx (NYSE: FDX ) and United Parcel Service (NYSE:UPS).

The service allows sellers to ship Amazon orders or products sold on other sites. Businesses must sell on Amazon ( AMZN ) to be eligible for the service.

Amazon ( AMZN ) already provides shipping to merchants who use its storage and delivery services. This service allows sellers to use the company’s delivery services without storing their shipping products in its warehouses.

Other headlines to look out for on Seeking Alpha:

Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole: Expect push-back on rate cuts, bond yield comments

China cuts one-year loan prime rate to record low of 3.45%

DuPont near deal to sell resins unit for $1.8B - report

On our catalyst watch for the day

VMware ( VMW ) will hold its three-day VMware Explore event in Las Vegas. The CEO’s of VMWare and Nvidia ( NVDA ) are two of the featured speakers.

Intel ( INTC ) will host a live virtual event for researchers, data scientists and developers focused on building artificial intelligence applications from edge to cloud.

Wall Street’s major market averages concluded Friday’s trading session relatively unchanged after the benchmark indices swung back and forth for most of the trading day.

The Nasdaq ( COMP.IND ) closed down 0.2%, while the S&P 500 (SP500) was relatively even, closing down 0.01% and the Dow ( DJI ) finished up 0.07%. On the week, all three indices also finished trading in negative territory.

Rates retreated a bit but remained near recent highs. The 10-year Treasury yield (US10Y) fell 6 basis points to 4.24% and the 2-year yield (US2Y) was down 2 basis points at 4.93%.

Of the 11 S&P sectors, four ended the day in the red, led by Communication Services. Meanwhile, Energy stocks rose on the back of higher oil prices.

Now let’s take a look at the markets as of 6 am. Ahead of the opening bell today, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the green. The Dow is up 0.4%, the S&P 500 is up 0.5% and the Nasdaq is up 0.6%. Crude oil is up 1% at more than $82 a barrel. Bitcoin is down 0.6% at less than 26,000.

In the world markets, the FTSE 100 is up 0.7% and the DAX is up 0.8%.

The biggest stock movers for the day premarket: Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW ) is up more than 12%, extending gains from Friday's session after the company's bottom line topped analysts' estimates in Q4 and provided an optimistic view for Q1 and FY2024 .

Napco Security Technologies (NASDAQ: NSSC ) is down more than 34% after the electronic security device maker restated its financial statements for the first three fiscal quarters of FY2023, citing some accounting errors.

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