There was a slower flow of new auctions the week of April 20. While The Deal's Pipeline had at least five stories on new auctions most weeks this year, we had none last week. This doesn't mean there weren't new auctions, just that there weren't any big or noteworthy enough for us to dedicate full stories to them.
In many ways, this dearth of new activity can be seen as a sign of an improving economy. After all, many companies (despite what they say) tend to auction assets because they need the cash. Fewer companies selling assets (or themselves) means fewer companies in need of cash. Of course "the economy" does not normally improve drastically from one week to the next. And many perfectly healthy companies do choose to divest assets -- often as a result of shareholder action, but also because they think it's a good time to sell. For now, let's just say one week does not a trend make. But we'll monitor the situation.
What about completed auctions? Other than the two big ones (Oracle Corp.'s [NASDAQ:ORCL] $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc. [NASDAQ:JAVA], American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) selling its car insurance unit to Farmers Group Inc. for $1.9 billion) there wasn't much, though a few distressed deals did go down -- two of them retail clothing chains.
From the "still on the block" update section, there is potential good news brewing for MGM Mirage Inc. (NYSE:MGM) and Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (NYSE:HIG). The latter was said to be in talks with Canada's Sun Life Financial Inc. (NYSE:SFL) over its life insurance business, before talks fell apart. Now two new likely bidders have emerged. ... - Nathaniel Baker
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