Thursday Papers: Private equity firms in $850m HGI deal - bid news and gossip

Financial Times

* The buy-out arm of Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice are joining forces in an $850m deal to buy HGI Holdings,a leading provider of mail-order medical products for the chronically ill, from Jordan Company.

* Telefónica has agreed to buy Portugal Telecom’s stake in Vivo, their Brazilian mobile phone joint venture, for €7.5bn.

*  Sanofi-Aventis is poised to press ahead with a formal offer for Genzyme that could value the US biotech company at close to $19bn, sources said.

* ConocoPhillips on Wednesday said it would sell its entire stake in Lukoil.

* Walt Disney on Tuesday agreed to buy Playdom for $763.2m - $563.2m in mostly cash plus a performance based earn-out as high as $200m.

* Brit Insurance has finally agreed to open its books to Apollo after the US private equity group improved its offer for the Lloyd’s of London insurer once again to £10.75 a share.

* Revenues at RAB Capital fell 14 per cent to £8.2m and the hedge fund manager said hopes of pushing ahead with its recovery had been dampened by a challenging first half to 2010; assets under management fell to $1.26bn from $1.35bn in December.

*  EFG International, one of Switzerland’s leading private banks, wrote off almost SFr860m ($813.4m) it had invested in Marble Bar Asset Management and in CM Advisors after big outflows of funds.

* Virgin Money, the financial services arm of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, has postponed its launch into mainstream banking until the spring.

* BBVA beat analysts’ forecasts on Wednesday even as it posted a 17.5% year-on-year drop in second-quarter net profits; profits for the three months to the end of June were €1.3bn compared with about €1.6bn for the same period last year.

The Daily Telegraph