News of Schneider Electric’s possible buyout of Invensys is engendering a good deal of interest and speculation. Here's what the U.K.'s Guardian said last week.
For those of you addicted to legal- and financial-ese, here are the no-doubt lawyer-vetted statements from both companies: Invensys; and Schneider.
What we know now is that Schneider has made a preliminary offer of $5 billion USD for the company. Invensys says it's interested. The French firm has, under British law, until August 8 to make a firm offer. One of the intriguing bits about this story is that it is Invensys who revealed the offer without consulting with Schneider first. Some analysts are speculating that the reason is to possibly start a bidding war. A number of major players might be tempted. For example, Emerson would certainly be interested, one might think, having already done some preliminary courting of Invensys last year. And Invensys' sell-off of its railroad division last year to Siemens relieved it of a lot of pension debt, which was limiting its attractiveness to buyers.
Here's more of what the cognoscenti are thinking. Bloomberg looks at it like this.
ARC has some graphs.
More from The Guardian.
It's doubtful whether much else will appear until August 8, when Schneider does—or does not—make a firm offer—unless one of the other big dogs jumps in first, or Invensys changes its mind. But we'll keep an eye out and let you know.
