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Electricity, natural gas, and communications company Enron (NYSE: ENE) has reached agreement to buy MG Plc, a London-based metals marketer, for about $446 million in cash. News to Go
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The acquisition gets Enron, a NOW 50 Index company, into the $120 billion global metals market, and expands the stable of commodity products it offers. The Houston-based company already offers more than 800 products such as communication bandwidth, coal, weather derivatives, plastics, pulp, and paper.
MG has two divisions: financial services and merchanting. The services division is the market maker, which means it helps bring buyers and sellers of metals together. The merchanting division buys and trades metals like copper and nickel. While it's not an earthshaking deal, it seems like a good fit for Enron since the company already has the infrastructure needed to make it a go.
Basically, Enron's edge in making markets is that it knows it can deliver the products it promises at the right time and place. In the case of natural gas, for example, Enron has 32,000 miles of pipeline at its disposal. Since MG already buys, sells, ships, and trades metals products, Enron won't have to build the infrastructure to get the business up to speed, yet Enron has the scale to expand MG's reach.
The deal has been approved by MG's board and Enron expects it will close in the third quarter.
Business software integration company webMethods (Nasdaq: WEBM) is buying infrastructure software company Active Software (Nasdaq: ASWX) for about $1.3 billion in stock in an effort to boost its integration capabilities. Active Software stockholders will receive 0.527 of a share of webMethods stock in exchange for each share of Active Software. The purchase price is a 39% premium to Active's closing price on Friday.
Leading microprocessor company Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) has released its latest version of the Xeon chip, according to CNET. The 700 MHz Xeon chip, designed for computer servers, is Intel's most powerful chip to date.
Budding satellite radio company XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR) has signed a deal with electronics retailer Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) to sell its radios in 350 stores starting in 2001, when the service becomes available. XM Satellite radio plans to beam 100 channels of music and news to cars from satellites.
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