Activists Feast on Full Plate for Thanksgiving while Steve Schwarzman Does Turkey Trot with Jersey Mike’s 

Activists are feasting on new targets at the Thanksgiving table, with a wave of new positions announced over the past month, as deal advisors are preparing for a potentially busy proxy season. The meal starts with Paul Singer’s Elliott Management, which gobbled up a new 5% stake in Japanese utility company Tokyo Gas. This comes just a week after the Paul Singer-led hedge fund disclosed an oversized $5 billion position at Honeywell, calling for the manufacturing conglomerate to break itself up. 

Paul Hilal joined the feast as his firm, Mantle Ridge, nominated nine directors at Air Products and Chemicals, enough to replace the entire company’s board. Mantle Ridge, bolstered by the backing of fellow investor DE Shaw, is pushing for major changes at the industrial gas maker, including a potential CEO refresh.

Larry Robbins will have an enjoyable Turkey Day. After weeks of back-and-forth, his Glenview Capital Management muscled four board seats onto the board of CVS Health, with the healthcare giant announcing a settlement on Monday. Robbins spoke to CNBC’s David Faber about his vision for the company’s future, while also commending CVS’s board and management for their willingness to reach an agreement and avoid a potential proxy contest.

Not to be outdone by the activists, Blackstone is readying the day-after Thanksgiving lunch with an $8 billion deal to acquire Jersey Mike’s Subs. Steve Schwartzman’s enjoyable LinkedIn post showed him eating some “due diligence.”

We in the deal business were also closely watching the Comcast news that it is spinning off its NBCUniversal cable channels such as E!, USA, CNBC and MSNBC to see what it could mean for the business channel.

We will be off next week celebrating, cooking and eating for the holiday, though we stand ready to help our readers with wine recommendations for Thanksgiving.



Have a great weekend and wishing our readers a great Thanksgiving,

GPP team

The Deal: M&A, Succession Battles Expected in 2025

Ron Orol recaps comments from a recent panel at the 2024 CorpGov Forum pointing out that barriers to entry for activists are decreasing, which will likely lead to an uptick next year in activist campaigns centered around M&A and succession planning. Read More

Bloomberg: Dye & Durham Pauses Sale After Investors Push Back on Deal Talks

The Canadian legal software company paused sale talks after key shareholders, Mawer Investment Management and EdgePoint Wealth Management, dismissed bids they considered undervalued and demanded leadership changes ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting in December. Read More

Bloomberg: Blackstone, Warburg Weighing $12 Billion Sale of IntraFi

Both asset managers have hired banks to explore interest in either a potential sale of the fintech firm or an IPO sometime next year, write Matthew Monks, Gillian Tan and Ryan Gould. Read More

Reuters: Amcor to Buy Berry Global in $8.4 Billion Deal to Create Packaging Powerhouse

The Australian packaging giant scooped up one of its main U.S. rivals in an all-stock deal, marking the largest transaction in Amcor’s history and one of the largest cross-border deals announced after the U.S. election. Read More

CNBC: The Disruptor and The Dealmaker

David Faber is joined by actor Ben Affleck and RedBird Capital’s Gerry Cardinale for a wide-ranging interview live from the Delivering Alpha conference discussing the evolution the media landscape, the impact of A.I and more. Read More

Skadden Insights: How Long Is Too Long? Activists Continue to Target Director Tenure

In their Q3 insights roundup, Skadden partners Elizabeth Gonzalez-Sussman, Louis Davis and Alexander Vargas suggest that proxy advisor firms and institutional investors are increasingly considering nine years to be the cutoff point at which board tenures become “too long”. They suggest that companies can proactively defend themselves from activist pressure through regular board refreshes and by implementing board tenure / age limits. Read More

UCLA School of Law: A Course Correction for Controlling Shareholder Transactions

UCLA Law Professor Stephen Brainbridge analyzes the Delaware Chancery Court’s approach to regulating controlling shareholder transactions and argues for the court to adopt reforms such as expanding the definition of “controller” or otherwise risk more companies seeking to reincorporate in other states. Read More

The Daily Spark: Fed Cuts Boosting M&A and IPOs

Apollo’s Chief Economist, Torsten Sløk, predicts that a combination of further interest rate cuts, tighter credit spreads and other macroeconomic factors will lead to a near-term increase in dealmaking and capital markets activity. Read More

ANTITRUST

Bloomberg: Google’s Anthropic AI Deal Cleared by UK Antitrust Agency

After investing $2 billion into the AI startup responsible for Claude models last year, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority stated the search giant hasn’t gained “material influence” over Anthropic and won’t pursue a full-blown investigation over merger rules. Read More

FROM OUR DESK TO YOURS

GPP’s last travel guide before the holiday season was an amazing trip in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, where you’ll find an explosion of wineries focused mostly on cool climate pinot noir and chardonnay. Think more Sonoma or Santa Barbara County than Napa, more roadside restaurants than Four Seasons. We stopped for lunch in Portland and ate charcuterie and sandwiches at Olympia Provisions before driving south into the heart of the breadbasket that is the Valley— ranches, hazelnut farms and vineyards.

McMinnville is where you want to stay—a “wine” town with tasting rooms and great restaurants mostly all cooking from their own farm or their friends and neighbors (we stayed at Atticus Hotel.) We started with a tasting at the OG, Eyrie Vineyards, and learned about David Lett, the first producer of Willamette Valley wines in the late 60s and early 70s. (We bought a 30-year-old pinot noir and carried it home in our laundry bag, safe and sound.) Our tasting visits included Corollary Wines, a sparkling producer with an amazing tasting room overlooking the Valley; Antica Terra, if you want the best of the best paired with a luxurious lunch in their cellar; Audeant, an up and coming producer, and Soter, which sits atop over 200 acres in Dundee Hills with eagles and raptors flying above you and has a wonderful lunch and tasting.

For meals, we have one word: Mushrooms! Don’t come to this region without loving mushrooms, and at Joel Palmer, a high-end inn known for their cuisine, we had an exquisite meal replete with local delicacies and a mushroom omakase. They also have a wine cellar filled with over 600 bottles of Oregon wines. We like wines with a bit of age, and enjoyed a 2006 chardonnay from St. Innocent, and a 1998 pinot from Brick House, two of Oregon’s finest. We even saw the sun one day!

PEOPLE MOVES

• Jefferies tapped Former Alnylam CEO John Maraganore as senior adviser. Read More
• Design software company Canva hired Zoom’s long-term finance chief Kelly Steckelberg as its CFO. Read More
• Lazard hired former Campbell Lutyens managing director Jennifer Tedesko in the firm’s private-capital advisory unit, where she’ll focus on PE secondaries. Read More
• Sally Buzbee, most recently executive editor of the Washington Post, will join Reuters to become the outlet’s news editor for the U.S. and Canada. Read More
• Deutsche Bank hired Alexander Hecker from Lazard to be vice chairman of global M&A. Read More

• December 4: The New York Times DealBook Summit, New York
• January 30: Skytop Shareholder Activism Summit, New York

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