Spiegel Online – Is the London Stock Exchange really worth $5 billion? Or even $6 billion?<\/p>\n
A number of investors, particularly hedge funds, are now piling into the shares of the London exchange on expectations that Nasdaq’s pursuit of the exchange will lead to a rich buyout.<\/p>\n
Some see a takeover price of 1,500 pence a share – nearly four times the London exchange’s trading price two years ago, and 20 percent higher than Nasdaq’s offer of $5.1 billion, or 1,243 pence a share – which Nasdaq called a final offer for the 71 percent that it does not own. The offer was announced on Monday.<\/p>\n
There is other hedge fund money, however, that is shorting shares of the London exchange, in essence betting on the opposite outcome: that there will be a meltdown in negotiations, resulting in no deal at all, and a sharp drop in the stock price of the London exchange.<\/p>\n
The bulls – and the belief that the London exchange will be acquired at a higher price – are gaining ascendancy after Samuel J. Heyman, the 1980s corporate raider best known for his $5 billion takeover of the chemical giant GAF, said that his investment companies – Heyman Investment Associates and Vesper Holdings – had amassed an 8.8 percent stake in the London exchange. They did so by paying as much as 1,290 pence a share for the stock, according to a filing on Tuesday.<\/p>\n