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HelloFresh inks $277M deal for US meal delivery startup

Germany’s HelloFresh has agreed to buy Illinois-based meal delivery business Factor75 for up to $277 million, as European food companies turn their attention to the US to fuel growth.

The deal comes just a few weeks after Nestlé completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of New York-based meal delivery startup Freshly. In June, Just Eat Takeaway.com fought off a rival bid from Uber to buy Grubhub in an all-stock transaction worth about $7.3 billion.

Factor75 will join HelloFresh’s existing US portfolio including EveryPlate and Green Chef, which it bought in 2018. The deal will give HelloFresh its first office in Chicago, as well as four production and fulfillment facilities.

Frankfurt-listed HelloFresh is currently the largest meal-kit provider in the US in terms of market share, reportedly surpassing Blue Apron in 2018. It logged 2.5 million active customers in the US during Q3 2020, a near 70% increase year-over-year. The pandemic has created a surge in demand for meal kits as shoppers seek alternatives to grocery stores. The meal kit market is expected to reach $14.8 billion by 2025, representing a 10.6% compound annual growth rate, according to PitchBook’s Q3 2020 foodtech report.

Founded in 2013, Factor75 specializes in healthy ready-to-eat meals. It secured $12.5 million in May in a round led by Marcy Venture Partners. Factor75 is expected to generate revenue of around $100 million in 2020.

 

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Bertelsmann set to buy US publisher Simon & Schuster

Penguin Random House owner Bertelsmann has agreed to acquire New York-based publisher Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS for over $2 billion, Reuters reported.

Following the deal, the German group will hold nearly a third of the US publishing market by revenue. Bertelsmann beat out Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and French media group Vivendi in an auction for the company, which ViacomCBS put up for sale in March in order to refocus on its core assets.

Rival book publishers, including News Corp-owned HarperCollins, have raised antitrust concerns about the acquisition, according to the Financial Times. Critics have said that Bertelsmann could exert too much power in specific genres, particularly hardcover fiction. Simon & Schuster publishes some of the world’s bestselling authors, including Dan Brown and Stephen King.

Through Penguin Random House, Bertelsmann is already the largest global book publisher by revenue, reporting €3.6 billion (about $4.3 billion) in 2019. The group agreed last December to acquire the remaining shares of Penguin from UK-based peer Pearson for $675 million, giving Bertelsmann full ownership.

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UK revisits IPO rules to entice tech founders

The UK government said Thursday it will review the rules around initial public offerings as it looks to make post-Brexit Britain more appealing to tech founders seeking to take their companies public.

The review includes measures that would give founders more influence over their companies upon listing, including the allowance of dual-class share structures that give some shareholders—notably founders—more voting rights per share than others.

Free float rules are also under review. Currently, companies listing on the London Stock Exchange must make 25% of their shares public. A lower free float threshold would let entrepreneurs maintain more control after going public.

Not everyone is a fan of the changes suggested.

“Traditionally, many institutional investors are wary of dual-class structures in the UK because they value the principle of one share, one vote,” said Claire Keast-Butler, a London-based partner with law firm Cooley who herself has been advocating for the use of dual-class shares. “They think that it is potentially bad for corporate governance because they’re putting too much power in the hands of a founder, or founders, rather than the shareholders as a whole.”

Keast-Butler said there has been a lot of resistance in the investor community to changing the system. Many fear rule changes could make founders less accountable. A case study often pointed to by critics is WeWork. The co-working giant imploded as it was preparing to go public in 2019, largely due to founder Adam Neumann taking advantage of a multi-class voting structure to wield outsized influence and thus eliminating any checks and balances on the company’s governance.

 

Read more – www.pitchbook.com