More Chinese whispers

Dom Walsh's piece on the Tui Hotelbeds auction caught my eye this morning.

Dom - the City's top leisure reporter over at The Times who knows his sector back to front - reports that the final round bidders for Hotelbeds are Cinven, Kuoni/EQT and a mystery Chinese bidder based in Shenzhen, China. Cinven is said to be leading the pack of bidders, according to an earlier Bloomberg report.

RARE ALERT: Fagron said to have drawn interest from Cinven et al - part 2

I have taken a lot of stick since I published my original article on Fagron, the Belgian pharmaceutical company, a few weeks ago.

Despite the somewhat sceptical tone of my original piece, some readers/followers/friends have been ribbing me for writing about Cinven's interest in purchasing Fagron, especially as the company recently called off takeover talks with potential buyers, which sent the share price plummeting.

RARE ALERT: Fagron said to have drawn interest from Cinven et al

I've been in two minds about writing on the Fagron auction. That's because there have been a lot of unsubstantiated (and possibly false) rumours going around the European markets in the last couple of weeks and as a result the stock has been volatile.

For readers unfamiliar with Fagron, it's a listed Belgian company that provides ingredients for pharmacies and hospitals. The business said last month that it had hired JP Morgan to carry out a strategic review after receiving several takeover approaches.

RARE Alert: Concordia Healthcare Corp said to be on the verge of a major deal - part 2

I'm glad to see Canadian pharma company Concordia Healthcare Group has finally confirmed my piece of juicy RARE from a few days ago with the announcement that it's spending $3.5 billion to buy Amdipharm Mercury from UK private equity firm Cinven.

In case you missed the announcement, here is the link: