All quiet on the deal front
Most firms have hunkered down in the hope of riding out the Covid-19 lockdown, but a couple of small new deals have been struck
There has been a paucity of corporate activity during the Covid-19 shutdown — unless investors regard the delaying of dividends and postponing of financial results as noteworthy events.And the deals that have been brokered have not made headlines. As small as these transactions are, they do at least represent a semblance of "business as usual" amid the persistent pandemic pronouncements.Most market watchers expect pending deals to be placed on the back-burner during the the lockdown. No company is going to rush into deals if assets could become markedly cheaper in the foreseeable future. By the same token, a fairly rapid recovery in economic activity could mean bargain- basement opportunities being lost.Perhaps the most intriguing proposal of the lockdown is the unbundling and separate listing of technology conglomerate Altron’s UK-based Bytes Technology Group (Bytes UK) on the London Stock Exchange.This forms part of a strategy to release value for shareholders that has been in pla...
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