Top Headlines This Week

🎰 Bet365 may be up for grabs in a £9bn.

💊 Sanofi completes a €10bn divestment of its consumer health unit Opella.

🧀 Ardian readies sale of French supermarket chain Prosol with €400m EBITDA, eyeing a €5bn+ valuation.

📉 DSM-Firmenich nears conclusion of carve-out for its Animal Nutrition & Health division, potentially fetching €3bn.

Deals, Deals, Deals

UK & Ireland 🇬🇧🇮🇪

🎰 The owners of Bet365 Group are considering a potential £9bn sale of the UK-based online gambling leader, according to The Guardian.

🏘️ Silver Lake Technology Management has put UK-based property website Zoopla up for sale, seeking a £500m valuation, per City AM.

🎟️ Inflexion has launched a sale process for UK-based public sector discount scheme Blue Light Card, with the business marketed off £50m+ EBITDA, per Mergermarket.

🩹 Montagu Private Equity confirmed it does not intend to acquire Advanced Medical Solutions Group PLC, a surgical dressings firm with a £430m market cap based in Cheshire.

👩‍🏫 Empowering Learning, a UK-based teacher training and recruitment firm backed by Graphite Capital, is in the second round of its sale process and is being marketed off c.£10m FY24 EBITDA.

🔐 Montagu Private Equity and Bridgepoint are among potential buyers for Escode, the cybersecurity arm of NCC Group, which has a total market cap of £465m.

📊 KKR and Intermediate Capital Group Plc are weighing potential bids of £1.4bn for UK-based analytics platform GlobalData.

🥡 Doordash is in talks with Deliveroo’s board about a possible cash acquisition valuing Deliveroo at £2.7bn (180p per share).

⚽ Aston Villa FC is exploring the sale of a minority stake in its women’s team, with a valuation around £60m, according to Bloomberg.

🐶 Rover, the US-based dog sitting marketplace, has acquired Gudog, a Dublin-based dog walking and sitting platform founded in 2015.

🎻 Goldman Sachs-backed Splice has acquired Spitfire Audio, the London-based provider of digital orchestral sound libraries, in a deal worth approximately $50m.

📺 France's Banijay Group is in early-stage talks to either acquire UK broadcaster ITV outright or purchase its studios business, which analysts value at £3bn+.

🥃 Irish distiller Waterford Whisky has received takeover offers reportedly exceeding €50m, according to The Sunday Times.

🔋 Macquarie Asset Management is acquiring full ownership of Island Green Power, having already acquired 50% in 2022 for £400m.

⚓ Brookfield has begun the sale of its 50% stake in PD Ports, with 2024 EBITDA expected to reach £90m. Sector multiples hover around 20x.

🔎 Owner CGE has launched a sale of UK-based Aurora Energy Research, which generates c.£100m in revenue and could command a £1bn valuation.

🚚 Nineteen Group, a UK exhibitions organiser backed by Phoenix Equity Partners, has acquired the Commercial Vehicle Show, a flagship transport event.

🛋️ Dunelm has acquired luxury home décor brand Designers Guild, which posted £39.8m in FY23 sales despite a pre-tax loss.

🍞 Associated British Foods (ABF) is in merger talks with rival Hovis, according to Sky News.

⚽ Former Wycombe Wanderers owner Rob Couhig has agreed to acquire League One football club Reading FC.

Central & Northern Europe 🇩🇪🇸🇪🇵🇱

 🔧 Industrial services firm REMA TIP TOP has hired Morgan Stanley to advise on a sale. The business posted €180m FY24 EBITDA.

🏦 Erste Group, Austria’s largest bank, is acquiring a 49% stake in Santander’s Polish unit for €7.3bn, according to Bloomberg.

📡 DigitalBridge has initiated a sale process for Finnish tower operator Digita, acquired in 2020 when EBITDA stood near €40m on €80m revenue.

💡 Swiss tech firm Landis+Gyr is exploring the divestment of its EMEA operations, which generated $1.7bn in 2024/25 revenue, per Finanz und Wirtschaft.

🐮 DSM-Firmenich continues the sale of its Animal Nutrition & Health unit, expected to fetch ~€3bn.

🎨 AkzoNobel, the Dutch coatings giant, is eyeing BASF's coatings division, which analysts value at €6bn.

🍣 Polish sushi box maker Sushi&Food Factor, with €100m turnover, is actively seeking a buyer.

🌲 Stora Enso has completed its €137m acquisition of Finnish sawmill company Junnikkala.

🛡️ Omada, the Danish identity governance software firm, has been sold by CVC Growth Funds to GRO Fund III and Kirk Kapital.

👨‍💻 Swiss HR consulting firm HR Path has acquired smahrt consulting AG, a specialist in HR-IT based in Switzerland.

Western & Southern Europe 🇫🇷🇪🇸🇮🇹

🏦 Mediobanca has launched a €6.3bn bid to acquire Banca Generali, intensifying M&A competition within Italy's banking sector amid ongoing takeover speculation involving Monte dei Paschi.

💊 Sanofi has completed the sale of its 50% stake in consumer health business Opella to CD&R for €10bn, completing its pivot to pure-play biopharma.

🚘 Maserati, the luxury car brand owned by Stellantis, may be put up for sale following a reported €260m operating loss in 2024, driven by weak sales in China.

🧀 Prosol, the French operator of the Grand Frais supermarket chain, is being marketed by Ardian for €4bn–€5bn EV, based on €400m EBITDA.

🏢 Oaktree has acquired Xenia Capital, a Spanish real estate financing firm, from UK fund Pacific Investments, in a bid to expand its Iberian platform.

🍷 Australian Wine Holdings, a consortium of institutional investors and the owner of Accolade Wines, has acquired the international wine brands of Pernod Ricard.

💄 Arkea Capital has taken a minority stake in French beauty retailer Adopt Parfum, which reported €170m in sales.

🏥 StepStone is close to acquiring 90% of Vitalia Home, Spain's second-largest nursing home operator, from CVC and Portobello. The €1bn deal values the business on €200m revenue and €48m EBITDA.

⚽ Jim Ratcliffe, billionaire owner of Ineos, has appointed Lazard to explore strategic options for OGC Nice, the French football club he bought in 2019 for around €100m.

🚚 Shiftmove is in exclusive talks to acquire Océan, the French fleet management unit of Orange Business, which manages 170,000+ vehicles.

🔧 Spanish engineering and renewables group TSK is preparing for a sale process. The company generated c.€1.3bn sales and c.€80m EBITDA in 2023 and has drawn interest from sovereign wealth funds and construction firms.

🏥 Aedifica, the Belgian healthcare real estate firm, has launched a €3.1bn exchange offer to acquire all shares in rival Cofinimmo.

♻️ Ireland’s IPL has merged with the Netherlands’ Schoeller Allibert, creating a reusable plastic packaging company with €1.2bn in revenue.

📦 CEVA Logistics, a subsidiary of France’s CMA CGM Group, has doubled its footprint in Turkey by acquiring Borusan Tedarik for €390m.

💳 Greek fintech Qualco Group plans to raise up to €98m via IPO on the Athens Stock Exchange, per Bloomberg.

🌱 Italian oil & gas major Eni has received offers for a 15–20% stake in its renewables subsidiary Plenitude, with the business reportedly valued above €10bn.

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