If we are supposed to be on the verge of a bear market, someone forgot to mention it to the deal makers as we once again saw seven new mergers announcements last week. We have had seven new mergers announced in three out of the four last weeks. You can use our new Merger Arbitrage Tool to view the spreads on these new deals and sort the entire list by profit, annualized profit or closing date by clicking on the headers.
The new deals include the acquisition of Medical Nutrition USA (MDNU) by Danone for $4 per share in cash, the acquisition of of TTI Telecom (TTIL) by Teoco Corp. for $3 per share in cash, the acquisition of PMA Capital (PMACA) by Old Republic International Corp. (ORI) in an all stock deal in which Old Republic will issue 0.55 shares of its common stock in exchange for each outstanding common share of PMA, the acquisition of Virage Logic Corp (VIRL) by Synopsys (SNPS) for $12 per share in cash, the acquisition of Talecris (TLCR) by Grifols in a cash plus stock deal worth $26.16, the acquisition of Eclipsys Corporation (ECLP) by Allscripts-Misys Healthcare (MDRX) in an all stock deal where each share of Eclipsys will be converted into 1.2 shares of Allscripts and the acquisition of Buckeye GP Holdings (BGH) by Buckeye Partners LP (BPL) in an all stock deal where each Buckeye GP unit will be converted into 0.705 Buckeye Partners unit.
Shares of WuXi PharmaTech (WX) fell sharply last week after its acquisition by Charles River Labs (CRL) came into question. San Francisco based activist hedge fund Jana Partners has become the largest shareholder of Charles River Labs after acquiring 4.7 million shares in recent weeks according to this article on Seeking Alpha. The fund feels that the price paid for WuXi was “unjustified” and would like to see the merger stopped or renegotiated at a lower price. It will be interesting to see how this turns out as hedge fund legend Julian Robertson (Tiger Management) has held a sizable position in WuXi since before the merger announcement. Trading at $17.09, WuXi is now very close to its pre-merger price of $16.57.