Mars, the confectionery, food and petcare giant, has reached an agreement to acquire Pringles and Pop-Tarts maker Kellanova for total consideration of $35.9bn, marking one of the largest deals of the year (Financial Times £).
The privately owned American group will pay $83.50 per share for Kellanova, representing a premium of about 33% to its closing price on 2 August, the day before takeover talks were first reported (The Times £).
Kellanova was created when Kellogg’s was split into three last year. Its brands include Pringles, Carrs and Special K (Mail).
The deal could attract scrutiny from competition watchdogs as it brings together well-known consumer goods brands including Mars’ Twix, Bounty and Milky Way with Kellanova’s Pringles, Special K cereal and Carr’s water biscuits (The Guardian).
The Lex column in Financial Times (£) reckons the defensive move in snacking by Mars “isn’t a light bite”. “The deal looks pricey considering the outlook for the less healthy food in Kellanova’s portfolio,” it writes.
The GMB union has called on the owner of Asda to take “urgent action” to protect jobs amid signs the supermarket is “in a fight for survival” (The Guardian).
The rise of faux Spanish lager brand Madrí Excepcional is denting Carlsberg’s sales in the UK, the boss of the Danish brewer has said (Telegraph £).
John Lewis is set to put storeroom workers on its shop floors in a race to improve customer service and win back sales (Telegraph £).
Investment giant Train Fund Management, run by Nelson Peltz, has sold around 3.8m Unilever shares for nearly £181m, according to a regulatory filing (Mail).
Starbucks has awarded its new chief executive Brian Niccol cash and stock potentially worth more than $100m, one of the largest hiring packages in US corporate history and four times larger than the sign-on deal offered to his ousted predecessor (Financial Times £).
Inflation rose for the first time this year in July, jumping back above the Bank of England’s 2% target rate to 2.2%, official figures showed (The Times £).
The annual increase in consumer prices, reported by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday, came in below expectations of a rise to 2.3 per cent from economists polled by Reuters (Financial Times £).
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