Wall Street’s corporate deal makers appear in rude health at the start of a new week, as a flurry of M&A provided many of Monday’s highlights.
At the same time there’s a generally more buoyant equity market, helped by a mostly positive earnings reporting season and slightly better economic figures.
The Dow Jones climbed more than 100 points, 0.6%, to 17,7666 while the S&P 500 added 0.8% to 2,095 and the Nasdaq moved 1% higher to 5,105.
As last week’s Federal Reserve comments seemingly put the possibility of a December interest rate rise back on the table, there’ll likely be a great deal of scrutiny on upcoming job stats for September as they’re released later this week.
For now though it is corporate wheeling and dealing in the spotlight.
Dyax Corp (NASDAQ:DYAX) soared around a third in pre-market dealing after London listed drug firm Shire tabled a US$5.9bn takeover. Shire, which has vowed to continue pursuing rival Baxalta (NYSE:BXLT), said it was acquiring the heart disease treatment developer for $37.30 in cash per Dyax share.
It was not the only healthcare deal in town this morning, even if it was the largest.
Hospital services group MedAssets (NYSE:MDAS) was also up a third, after agreeing to a US$2.7bn takeover offer from private equity group Pamplona Capital.
And Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) is to acquire Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, a privately owned cardiovascular disease focussed biotech, for as much as US$2bn.
The real-blue chip deal of the day comes from Visa (NYSE:V) which is set to consolidate, with the purchase of Visa Europe via a US$23.4bn (€21.2bn) deal. Some €16.5bn is to be paid up-front, of which €11.5bn will be cash, and a further €4.7bn would be due after four years.
Visa also revealed this morning what it said was a ‘strong’ fourth quarter performance. The company had quarterly net income of US$1.5bn, which takes the annual figure to US$6.3bn. It also authorised a US$5bn share buy-back programme, and repeated that it will increase dividend payments.
Charles Scharf, Visa chief executive, said: “We are very excited about unifying Visa into a single global company with unmatched scale, technology and services.”
Elsewhere, there were also a US$2.7bn deal which sees TreeHouse Foods (NYSE:THS) acquiring ConAgra Foods (NYSE:CAG) to become America’s larger ‘private label’ food company.
And Coty (NYSE:COTY), the personal hygiene group, is buying a Brazilian beauty products business for US$1bn.
Meanwhile, newly split-up HP Inc (NYSE:HPQ) gained around 12.5% to US$13.77 on its first trading day since the business technology arm was spun-off. The jettisoned Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) was trading at US$14.72, which is notionally down slightly from its demerged price.
Later, after the closing bell, Walking Dead broadcaster AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) is in the diary to report after Monday’s close, along with insurer Allstate (NYSE:ALL), car rental group Avis Budget (NASDAQ:CAR) and wearable tech firm Fitbit (NYSE:FIT).