Good morning
The Charleston, S.C., church where nine people were slain re-opened to prayer service on Sunday. The pastor at Emanual AME said: “No evildoer, no demon in hell or on Earth can close the doors of God’s church.” On the economic front, Monday brings May existing home sales at 10:00 a.m. ET. Bloomberg expects the number to rise to 5.25 million on a seasonally adjusted annual basis from 5.04 million in April. At 1 p.m. ET, European leaders meet in Brussels to discuss the Greek crisis.
Deal dances: Cigna rejects Anthem, Williams Co. open to offers. Cigna said the $47 billion bid from its much bigger brother was inadequate. Cigna also dinged Anthem, saying the company was bascially a mess with no growth strategy. Meanwhile, natural gas pipeline company Williams turned down a $48 billion offer from Energy Tranfer Equity LP to merge, but says it has hired investment bankers to entertain other offers. Bloomberg, Reuters
Optimistic Greek officials send wrong proposal to creditors. Yeah, this happened. A revised version of Greece’s proposals apparently got mixed up and a wrong one was sent to one of their creditors last night. With everyone optimistic at the emergency summit however, the officials were pretty cool about it, with one saying: “(i)t’s not so dramatic, but they sent the wrong one by mistake.” Financial Times (paywall)
Taylor Swift wins against Apple. In a surprising u-turn, Apple will now be paying artist’s royalties during their free three-month trial period on Apple Music, reversing an earlier decision by the company and chalking up a win for Taylor Swift who threatened to withhold her new album from the tech giant’s new streaming service in support of “new bands and artists that may not be able to afford not getting paid for three months.” Bloomberg
Fidelity isn’t budging on Colt Telecom deal. Colt, the telecom services group that recently claimed its majority shareholder’s bid to acquire the company’s remaining shares as “unfair to its independent shareholders,” has just received a nasty rebuke from the titanic asset manager, saying that the offer was final and “will not be increased under any circumstances.” Fidelity had offered to take the company private at a valuation of $2.73 billion. “Fidelity has committed to holding its investment in Colt and not to sell or take any other steps to dispose of its Colt shares to any third party prior to 31 December 2016. This commitment stands whether as a consequence of the offer Colt becomes a private company, or remains as a public listed company should the offer lapse.” StockMarketWire
IOOF tanks over 20% after insider-trading cover up gets exposed. One of Australia’s largest financial firms, IOOF, saw its shares dive as much as 20% today after it was revealed that insider trading, front-running, and various other misconduct investigations within the company were dealt with in-house rather than reported to Australia’s Securities and Investments Commission. IOOF, for their part, issued a statement saying that those issues were “dealt with appropriately.” Financial Times (paywall)
Stock photo © EdStock