Ride-hailing and delivery company Grab Holdings has drawn backing from T. Rowe Price (TROW) and Temasek for its planned tie-up with special purpose acquisition company Altimeter Growth (AGC), Bloomberg's Manuel Baigorri, Joyce Koh, Yoolim Lee, and Elffie Chew report, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The companies have expressed interest in joining a private placement in public equity offering to support the Southeast Asian company's combination with the SPAC, the authors say, noting that BlackRock (BLK) is also in discussions to participate in the offering, which could raise roughly $4B. Grab aims to announce the merger as soon as next week, the authors note. Altimeter has two SPACs - Altimeter Growth and Altimeter Growth 2 (AGCB). Reference Link
BlackRock (BLK), blank-check firm Pegasus Europe and State Street (STT) are among those expressing interest in Credit Suisse's (CS) asset management arm, three sources told Reuters. A spokeswoman for Credit Suisse said the bank had no plans to sell all or any parts of its asset management business. Sources said Credit Suisse is in the early stages of a strategic review of its asset management arm and has yet to entertain in-depth discussions with interested parties, Reuters reports. Reference Link
UBS analyst Alex Kramm raised the firm's price target on Nasdaq to $178 from $170 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The company's monthly volume metrics report saw better derivatives activity, with stronger revenue capture trends across the U.S. and European cash equities more than offsetting the slightly lower Q1 volumes than he had modeled, the analyst tells investors in a research note.
Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Bedell raised the firm's price target on BlackRock to $847 from $437 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The analyst sees the risk/return dynamics as "heavily favoring" the interest rate sensitive trust banks heading into the Q1 results.
Piper Sandler analyst Richard Repetto raised the firm's price target on Nasdaq to $165 from $160 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. The positive backdrop for trading stocks exiting 2020 is playing out and could persist through 2021, Repetto tells investors in a research note.
Trax has secured $640M in a Series E financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund (SFTBY) and technology-focused funds managed by existing investor BlackRock (BLK). This round of primary and secondary capital also saw participation from new investors including OMERS, one of Canada's largest defined benefit pension plans, and Sony Innovation Fund by IGV. The company said, "Trax's cloud platform is accelerating the digital transformation of consumer packaged goods companies and grocery retailers by providing granular visibility of rapidly changing store conditions. Trax solutions enable users to make timely, data-driven decisions and implement immediate corrective actions. As a result, brands and retailers are accelerating growth, reducing costs, and driving awareness and purchase intent. Powered by its proprietary computer vision, advanced Internet of things hardware, on-demand workforce, and shopper solutions, Trax empowers its customers to provide the best shopping experiences imaginable." Reference Link
Wells Fargo analyst Christopher Harris raised the firm's price target on BlackRock to $890 from $875 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. The analyst is "fine-tuning" his estimates of assets under management and EPS, with the largest changes being an addition of $180M of Q1 fund launch costs to G&A expense and Q1 market action that was better than his standard quarterly assumption for equity markets but worse for fixed income and foreign currency.
BlackRock has made a financing deal with a group of banks that links the company's lending costs for a $4.4B credit facility to how well the company can achieve staff-diversity targets and other sustainable business goals, Dawn Lim of The Wall Street Journal reports. The firms goals include increasing the number of Black and Latino employees and boosting the share of women in the company's leadership ranks. Depending on the number of targeted goals the company meets or fails, BlackRock's lending cost will rise and fall. Reference Link
Raymond James analyst Patrick O'Shaughnessy raised the firm's price target on IntercontinentalExchange to $136 from $133 and keeps a Strong Buy rating on the shares. The analyst expects the recently completed Ellie Mae acquisition to "sustainably boost" IntercontinentalExchange's organic revenue growth profile. Further, ICE's energy futures franchise remains positioned to meet global risk management needs, O'Shaughnessy tells investors in a research note.