Marc Bolland nominated CEO of M&S

After three successful years as the chief executive of Morrisons, Mr Bolland heads now to Marks & Spencer. The retail giant spent a year looking for a new CEO before finally choosing the 'flying Dutchman' this week. Now expectations are high, since his nickname is not only related to his origins in the Netherlands, but also because of the good he has done to Morrisons. Bolland was barely known in the market before taking the job there, however after reverting the supermarket's downturn tendency in profits, ongoing at that time, he is believed to move M&S forward in the current turbulent scenario.

I read this story in 4 major sources: The Guardian, the FT, the Daily Mail and The Independent.

In general, they sounded pretty optimistic in their views, but it is still noticeable the different approaches used.

Browsing the Financial Times website I could find 3 articles on this topic. Two were pieces of news and the other was from a column. Andrea Felsted was the correspondent for both of the news. In the first one, she kept a rather informative tone and apart from mentioning the variation in the share prices (up for M&S and down for Morrisons) she highlights his trajectory, even pointing out the critics made so far about the fact that is a "food man", meaning he could have trouble with the new job. Her second article "Bolland must wear two caps at M&S" informs about how the new CEO will have to deal with the position he has at Morrisons until January (end of the fiscal year), after the announcement has been made. In this one right from the beginning she does not sound totally in favour of the deal, or at least not in the way it was made. She quotes him in the previous months and alerts for the vast choice M&S had. On the other hand, still at the FT website, Andrew Hill dedicates his column to state all the good reasons for choosing Bolland, in a rather optimistic article.

The Guardian and the Daily Mail did not differ that much in their approaches. They both published simple texts to relate this new fact. As expected, there was a generous part dedicated to explain who Marc Bolland is and what he has done. The Mail gives an enthusiastic tone to this story, from Sir Stuart Rose fashions M&S top job for Marc Bolland (headline) to the sensationalism from the short statements below. The Guardian remains more formal throughout the article, however they both sounded pretty optimistic, mentioning only Bolland's achievements so far, and not the possible negative aspects - like Ms Felsted did for the FT.

The Independent, as a good tabloid, talks about the City's response to the announcement in a quite exaggerated way, after the markets reacted really in favour of M&S. As well as numbers, there is a big space for the Mr Bolland's history in the business.

Therefore, after reading all these sources my opinion is that Marks and Spencer should benefit from the fact that it will have a good CEO, recently proved by the Morrisons experience. After all, a supermarket who had profit troubles since 2004 saw its financial health back as Marc Bolland stepped in. As the other piece of news from the Independent says "Morrisons reveals growth 'well ahead' of rivals" and that is why I believe even though it seems clear that Bolland is not really experienced in the clothing and other sectors that are also in M&S, the ones that should be more cautious are from Morrisons, in order to choose the right new CEO and not fail after Mr Bolland is gone.

The Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8d85cb20-d438-11de-990c-00144feabdc0.htm

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9fa3e1bc-d47d-11de-a935-00144feabdc0.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d7c46fac-d442-11de-990c-00144feabdc0.html

The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/18/marc-bolland-marks-spencer

Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1228920/M-S-names-Morrisons-boss-Marc-Bolland-new-chief-executive.html

The Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ms-shareholders-cheer-bolland-appointment-coup-1823134.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/morrisons-reveals-growth-well-ahead-of-rivals-1823409.html

HP's $2.7mi negotiation with 3com

HP confirms its position as one of the technological giants with the announcement of a millionaire deal to buy 3Com. The move marks the expansion of HP's corporate product line. 3Com coming to reinforce its presence in the data centres, combined with the networking solutions already avaiable. Also, it's being considered a big step in the competition against Cisco, since it will influence directly the main operations of this top company - major market rival. In addition, HP will benefit from a firmer position in the Chinese market, where 3Com had reasonable growth in recent years and retains good market share.

In the financial press, I could basically find this story in 4 sources: BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Generally speaking, the US and the UK media published pieces with similar contents. However, within the American publications there has been some notable differences in the approach to this news.

Cisco is mainly involved in the impact caused by the advances of this deal, and that's on what BusinessWeek decided to focus. Right from the headline and first lines the author makes it clear that his assumption is that this negotiation has been made in order to secure HP's place in the business by calling the attention of the market, especially Cisco's since it is the current "big boss" when it comes to switches, routers and related equipment. The author also adds briefly the importance of the deal in conquering China and finalises with a hopeful tone by mentioning HP's financial figures.

Still considering the outcomes of this acquisition to HP operations in the Chinese market, the FT provided a an article in which the details of 3Com's presence in the Asian country was clarified. Hence the role of Cisco in the news wasn't given much space there. The correspondent sounded quite optimistic in my view, by the way he talked about the expanding opportunities 3Com might offer to HP.

Reuters, characterised by its straight-forward tone typical from press companies, states the main facts surrounding the negotiation using bullet points as well as fast reading sentences which can be very understanding. As a result it mentions a bit of everything, from HP's reputation in the business to Cisco's and China's future impact. Besides, it gave me a broader view of the ongoing situation in the technological market which could be summarised with one of the sentences: "The deal is the latest sign that technology giants from IBM to Oracle Corp are increasingly encroaching in each other's markets as they seek to become one-stop shops for computing, networking and data storage".

Finally, the WSJ's piece for this story emphasises Cisco's role in the acquisition too. But, the author decided to picture that reviewing recent moves in the areas concerning hardware and software, and even other device producers - dispersing a little bit in my opinion. Thus, I wouldn't consider that article really biased, yet phrases like "Buying 3Com was a surprise" and the general tone that is not actually informing about 3Com's good points gave me the impression of his personal view to be more critical.

All in all, the sources I chose here seemed pretty clear and not that favouring to any either side of the competitors involved. Indeed I find it a good thing the different approaches and way of detailing the information, the readers are the ones who are benefited from that. As for the deal itself, my personal view is that HP has a great potential to absorb from 3Com. Nowadays in the business scenario it's widely seen 2 ongoing trends, companies gathering in order to strengthen in a world of increasing competition and the rush to conquer developing markets, mainly the most believed one which is China. Thus, notably HP can combine both and take advantage of a firmer position in the sector in it's possibly successful path in the future, which will alarm its rivals. Therefore, if I were to chose one of the articles I'd go for a combination of the FT and Reuters, that would lead to a piece of news including what I've just mentioned above. The negotiation is to be completed in the first half of 2010, so let's see with which quality HP will really print this deal.

BusinessWeek:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc20091111_279456.htm

The FT:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/64850f9e-cf1d-11de-8a4b-00144feabdc0.html

Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSN1138008420091112

The Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574530001155685762.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

Bravo! ATG-Live Nation buyout spetacle

This weekend the Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) is completing the purchase of Live Nation's 17 UK venues, becoming by far Britain's top theatre operator in size.

Although the official announcement is scheduled for Monday, hands can already be clapped as details of the deal have been published by now. This final bid comes approximately 4 months after Live Nation put them on sale. At that time, when the bidding had opened in July, the number of interested was about 20 and, as the Guardian highlighted, the selling price was believed to exceed 75 million pounds (finally, the price asked by ATG was £92mi). Also, that article already expected something from the ATG, Qdos - a more modest theatre operator maybe willing to gain market -, Key Brand - company which already acquired US Live Nation theatres - or Stage - Dutch-owned operator and producer currently presenting at West End. As published, the first one would surely be likely to expand its operations, once numbers matter in that sector and since they were even then a leading group, an acquisition of this size would isolate them as number 1 in the business, resulting in more control over producers. That should be a good initiative, but it was also noted that an increase in the supply of seats could have its drawbacks, especially after their not-so-successful "Guys and Dolls" recently. All in all, however, the author was pretty optimistic about the whole idea of selling because, according to him, it would lead to better quality venues. In my opinion, on the other hand, the articled showed some bias aspects as to his preference for ATG.

In addition, apart from the early bidding history, the purchase is announced barely 1 month after the UK antitrust authorities stopped a merger process between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, for the ticketing department. The FT had a story on that in early October and tried to maintain a neutral view of the fact, though bad news are in their essence not pleasant and I couldn't really notice a pitying tone in the article. Authors did point out the impact in the stock market and related aspects of mergers in the present, which could give a broader view on the subject for the readers.

Thus, the news wasn't too much of a surprise. In fact, as The Stage published, it has "been long anticipated by the UK market". Alias, this newspaper focused more on the managing side of the story, by writing down the name of every single venue agreed in the deal as well as how the theatre business is affected by the agreement, especially when it comes to the supply of seats in London. Still, concerning the financial aspect of the story, I could only find the speculation about ATG's funding for the bid - widely thought to come from outside finance.

The other source that I used was the Times. As emphatic as Sunday newspapers are in Britain, this article emphasises more of the new owner's world. So, the approach used ranges from the company's history to business anticipation now that the acquisition is complete. It does show financial figures behind the deal and a solid one-sentence statement about ATG's funding: "The deal is being financed from increased bank borrowing and new cash raised from shareholders". By the way, venue names and the supply of seats were also mentioned in this source, but shortly. In my view, it was good that the author could remind the readers about the Live Nation-Ticketmaster failed attempt to merge and LN reason to sell the venues; keep its operations focused on the booming segment of live music.

Accordingly, these two pieces of news I found didn't really demonstrate any bias to me. They more factual and more informal in the Sunday Times, as I already expected. Anyway, my idea was to check how a specialised paper's coverage would differ from a more general one, and actually they tended to follow the same format, to some extent. I could mainly notice the fact that The Stage named each and every theater, whereas the Times had more financial numbers instead.

Ultimately, my opinion on this story follows the one from Mr. Shenton, the Guardian's author back in July. I believe this transaction will probably be a good thing for costumers. After all, Live Nation will maintain it's business oriented to what they already do best, promoting concerts. That way they shall come up with even more contracts with the world's top performers, benefiting the fans. On the ATG's side, they'll be dominating the theatre business here in the UK, and I hope they use all their influencing power with producers to bring selective shows to theatres, as well as investing in them so that people have an even better experience when going to musicals, plays etc. As he noted, "It's a striking and inescapable fact: the most powerful people in commercial British theatre are not directors, or even producers, but landlords", so I reckon that's the reason the we should keep an eye on them if we desire theatres change for the better, in either side of the footlights.

The Guardian (July 15):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/jul/15/west-end-live-nation-theatres

FT (October 8):

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6dae8f7a-b3d2-11de-98ec-00144feab49a.html

The Times:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/leisure/article6898117.ece

The Stage:

http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/26071/exclusive-atg-to-complete-92m-live