CENTRICA'S board will be taking soundings this week on whether to launch a £1.4 billion bid for the North Sea gas producer Venture Production.
Centrica boss Sam Laidlaw has been actively seeking out assets to reduce the company's dependency on imported gas and has seen an opportunity in Venture. The Takeover Panel has set a "put up or shut up" deadline for next Monday after Centrica built a
23.6 per cent stake in the Aberdeen firm and then left the market guessing as to what it would do next.
Whatever speculation one reads, sources tell me the board is undecided on whether it should make a move for the whole company. But the rise in Venture's value will play a big part in its decision.
Venture's shares were trading below 500p when Centrica began its raid in March and since then have been as high as 887p. A bid for Venture is not likely to cost Centrica much less than 950p, or twice their price of just three months ago.
Added to that, Venture is performing well, with production rising and its balance sheet bolstered by some well-timed asset trades. As such its shareholders would extract a high price out of its would-be acquirer.
There was talk in the City that a deal only depended on the two agreeing a price, but Venture's Mike Wagstaff won't be rolled over easily.
A likely scenario is that Centrica will instead use the cash left over from last December's rights issue to buy other assets, as Laidlaw hinted in this newspaper in May. It can take comfort from earning a dividend stream from its chunky stake in Venture that also blocks out any rival bidder.
Investors need to be mindful that if Centrica walks away it would weaken shares in Venture for six months until, under takeover rules, it was able to return with an offer.
Standard's candidate may be close to homeTHE battle to replace Sir Sandy Crombie as chief executive of Standard Life is gradually winding down to the two in-house candidates who have been in the frame all along. Nick Prettejohn, who has resigned as UK chief executive of Prudential, has made it clear he doesn't want to move out of London. He echoes Aegon boss Otto Thoresen's decision, revealed here last month, to rule himself out.
Standard finance chief David Nish and Keith Skeoch, head of the asset management division, are the two internal candidates, with Nish said to be odds-on to land the job.
However, Archie Kane, who has the top Scottish job in Lloyds Banking Group, remains a live contender, and the prospect of heading a FTSE-100 company would surely be enough to lure the former Widows boss to Lothian Road. Standard chairman Gerry Grimstone is committed to a worldwide search, but Edinburgh looks increasingly likely to offer up one of its own.
Vodafone the favourite to acquire T-MobileTHE UK's hugely competitive mobile phone market looks like throwing up another merger reducing the five main players to four.
Vodafone is favourite to acquire T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telecom, which is much the weaker of the players. Unprofitable and lacking in investment, it is hardly a catch, but acquiring its customer base would help ease the pressure on margins.
No wonder all the operators are looking at it. They also probably know that the government's desperation to build the digital network, which requires operators to make profits to invest, will make it easier to get a deal through the competition authorities.
Can Gillies complete mission impossible?FOUR months into the job and Scottish Enterprise chairman Crawford Gillies tells me in an interview on page 7 that he believes the agency can help Scotland bridge the productivity gap with the rest of the UK.
But he also knows it's a 40-year-old problem and no one who has gone before him has managed to find the solution. That's why he also admits there is "no silver bullet".
He also says the restructuring that took outgoing chief executive Jack Perry the best part of two years is complete.
But he now has to find Perry's replacement and that's likely to take another year. At times it seems that Scottish Enterprise itself is a work in progress.
Gillies says he'll not be deterred from speaking out if he thinks something needs saying. Since the days of Sir Donald MacKay there has been no one at SE prepared to do that. Whether he gets the right result is another matter.
