It will be a very quiet week here in Australia with probably the most important corporate stories being the push by some big shareholders to reject private equity deals: Qantas and Rebel Sport are high on the list of deals under threat.
Rebel Sport shareholders meet this Thursday to approve or reject the scheme of arrangement proposed by Archer Capital, which is offering $4.60 a share.
Harvey Norman has said it will accept but some shareholders, led by Paradice Investment Management, have refused to rule out rejecting the offer.
Archer said at the start of the month that the offer price would not be increased.
Perpetual Investments lifted its stake to 10.66 per cent on Friday. It picked up $3.2 million worth of shares at an average $4.28 a share, compared to the $4.60 offer price.
Paradice recently lifted its holding by one per cent to make its point that it can block the bid, if other big holders combine with it.
That leaves the actions of Perpetual looking interesting because the big investment group has so far blocked Cemex’s attempt to takeover Rinker group in a much bigger takeover play. PPT has more than 10 per cent of Rinker.
Lazards recently blocked the private equity buyout of Flight Centre and refused to accept into the Robert Bosch offer for Pacifica.
At Qantas, UBS Investment Management and perhaps several other smaller holders, want a higher price from the Macquarie Bank led group offering $5.60 a share ($5.45 minus the 15c dividend) for the airline.
Rebel shares finished at $4.26 on Friday and will almost certainly fall if the deal is defeated.
Meanwhile on the economic front it will be housing finance for January, lending finance for the same month and the labour market figures for February which will dominate discussion.
Overseas and in the US the problems in the subprime mortgage market will be highlighted when some of the best investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns kick off the quarterly earnings reporting season for big investment banks.
These and other investment banks are deeply involved in the purchase and repackaging of home loans, including subprime mortgages into mortgage-backed bonds (so-called RMBs) which are then sold to a wide range of investors.
Some of these are underwater and one of the things analysts are now watching is where the losses start appearing. HSBC and several other lenders have already take billions of dollars worth of write downs and losses.
For some analysts this will overshadow the release of the February Producer Price Index on Thursday and the Consumer Price Index for the same month on Friday.
An early look at the US consumer sentiment for March will also come on Friday and again this will be watched to see if the subprime problems and the recent stockmarket jitters have impacted the so far strong confidence of US consumers.
And with the health of US manufacturing still questioned, another report that will get attention on Friday will be the Federal Reserve’s February data on industrial production.US retail sales for February are out on Tuesday.
MONDAY:
Australian Bureau of Stats Housing Finance Figures for January.
TUESDAY:
ANZ Jobs index data for February; the Nab’s February business survey; Dun and Bradstreet business expectations survey for March; BIS Shrapnel holds a business forecasting conference in Brisbane.
WEDNESDAY:
Lending finance figures for February from the ABS and the Westpac/Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment survey for March.
THURSDAY:
Rebel Sports shareholders meeting on the Archer Capital bid; ABS Labour Force figures for February; Pay TV Industry forum with James Packer speaking.
FRIDAY:
ABS figures on merchandise imports for February and short-term foreign arrivals figures, also for February.
