The joint statement released by the Treasury, Federal Reserve and FDIC on Sunday evening about making the depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank whole should help alleviate some of the concerns investors had going into the weekend that other dominoes are likely to fall in the coming week. The liquidity they have agreed to provide banks by accepting treasury securities at par is an unprecedented step but should help stabilize the financial system.
Unfortunately shareholders and bondholders of banks do not benefit from these actions besides limiting a free fall in regional bank stocks. We saw some arbitrage spreads widen on Friday but most of those were related to the deals that were already in the high risk group or faced significant regulatory hurdles. We also saw the spread on the First Horizon (FHN) deal increase as the stock fell along with the rest of the banking group. If anything, the events of last week should hopefully give regulators a different perspective than they have adopted in recent months. We discussed First Horizon’s acquisition by TD in more detail in our last Merger Arbitrage Mondays article here.
Diversey Holdings (DSEY)
Diversey Holdings, a cleaning and hygiene products company, entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Solenis for $4.6 billion, less than a year after going public.
Diversey is a 100-year-old company that was founded by a dynamic father and son team in Chicago in 1923. The company was acquired by Unilever in 1996 and by Johnson Wax Professional in 2002. In 2011, Diversey was purchased by Sealed Air Corp, and in 2017 by Bain Capital.