Railroad giant Norfolk Southern has booked Joele Frank for financial PR support as it rejects takeover overtures from Canadian Pacific.
CP has revised a November offer and proposed a voting trust structure to segregate the companies as the deal receives regulatory scrutiny, allowing CP to pay Norfolk shareholders cash before closing, although the per-share price actually declined from the earlier bid.
Norfolk dismissed a previous CP bid as "grossly inadequate," and this week shot down a revised proposal as "not only less than what the Norfolk Southern board has already found to be grossly inadequate, it is even more uncertain and risky given the decrease in cash consideration."
Both companies are publicly traded with Norfolk based in Virginia and CP headquartered in Calgary.
Joele Frank brass including Joele Frank, Dan Katcher and Andrew Siegel are repping Norfolk Southern, which released a white paper Dec. 7 by former Surface Transportation Board commissioners saying regulatory approval could take nearly two years and would be unlikely with the proposed voting trust.
CP calls the offer a "transformational opportunity."
Martin Cej is assistant VP for PA and comms. for CP.
Stagwell CEO Mark Penn reports Q3 net revenues jumped 6 percent to $614.5M, a record performance for a non-political period. Operating income soared 45.7 percent to $60.9M.
Joele Frank works for Klöckner Pentaplast as the German maker of plastic films declares Chapter 11. A successful reorganization would slash its its corporate debt by $1.5B.
Teneo represents Metsera, the New York City biotech focused on weight-control products, which is subject to a bidding war between heavyweights Novo Nordisk and Pfizer.
Haggie Partners is working the $7B takeover of the specialty insurer Convex by Canada’s Onex private equity fund and American International Group.
WPP reported Q3 revenues less pass-through costs tumbled 5.9 percent to $3.3B, a performance new CEO Cindy Rose called “unacceptable.”
