UK

Industrial conglomerate Melrose has prevailed in its £8bn hostile bid for UK engineering firm GKN, after weeks of sabre-rattling rhetoric on both sides. Looking at GKN’s shaky defence, it is hard to see how there could have been any other outcome.

Tenaga Wind Ventures UK has signed a £120m loan facility arranged by BayernLB, as the UK renewable energy arm of Malaysian utility Tenaga Nasional looks to refinance the debt-powered acquisition of two companies.

Walt Disney has thrown Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox a lifeline in its battle to acquire the remaining shares of Sky it does not own by offering to buy Sky News, putting pressure on the £22.1bn debt-backed offer for the whole of Sky from rival bidder Comcast.

Industrial conglomerate Melrose has received enough votes to acquire engineering group GKN, after weeks of increasingly strongly worded attacks from both boards and the intervention of the UK government.

Conviviality, the UK alcohol wholesaler that owns Bargain Booze and Wine Rack, plans to call in administrators after a £125m emergency capital increase failed to attract enough demand to keep the company afloat.

US exchange operator CME’s revised bid for Nex Group, the electronic trading and post-trade platform company, has been recommended unanimously by the boards of both firms. The offer is higher than expected at 1,000p, half in cash and half in shares.

The UK’s Green Finance Taskforce has come up with strong recommendations for how the country should green its financial system, including issuing a big sovereign green bond, writes Jon Hay.

UK casual wear company JD Sports is set to break into the US market with an around $558m acquisition of Finish Line, which will be financed in the loan market.

Industrial conglomerate Melrose and its hostile acquisition target UK engineering firm GKN fired their final salvos in the run up to a crucial shareholder meeting on Thursday.

UK drug maker GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to buy Novartis’s 36.5% stake in the pair’s consumer healthcare joint venture, just days after backing out of an acquisition for a similar Pfizer unit.

This week, Elysium Healthcare successfully refinanced the loan that backed its leveraged buyout by BC Partners, getting a bigger size and better pricing three months after the original deal was met with a lukewarm reception from investors.

Agricultural commodities trader ED&F Man has signed three revolving credit facilities totaling $1.128bn, bringing the UK company’s committed funds to more than $2.4bn at a time when the company’s sugar and grains businesses have taken a hammering.