Loss-making Costa Coffee Calls off Sale from Coca Cola

Coca-Cola has called off plans to sell Costa Coffee to private equity after low valuations manifested from wannabe bidders.  

Coca-Cola was said to be selling Costa for £2bn, a discount from the £3.9bn it paid for the business from Whitbread, its previous owner.  Bidders included TDR Capital (which owns ASDA) and Bain Capital (which owns Gail's - which it bought for £200m - and Pizza Express).

Costa has faced competition from cheaper rivals like Greggs, and brands like Blank Street and Black Sheep Coffee.

James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola, admitted the Costa transaction had not delivered. Henrique Braun (California-born COO) will come in as new CEO from March 2026.

Strategic Buyers like Docusign Dominate Tech M&A

Strategic buyers are trumping private equity in tech acquisitions in 2024. 

An example is Nasdaq-traded Docusign's (DOCU) acquisition of Lexion, an AI-powered agreement management tool, for $165m.  It is an interesting example of expanding in AI through acquisition. Lexion is essentially an intelligent contracts database, that does all the smart interpretation of contracts. They started focusing on law firms and expanded into corporates. They spent time building their machine learning stack which required upfront investment.

Bain and Hellman & Friedman tried to acquire Docusign in February which fell through following failure to agree on a price shortly after which Docusign announced 400 layoffs. 

Docusign has 1.5 million clients in 180 countries.

Franco-Belgian bank Dexia gets bailout, Neubeger sold to private equity

Dexia received 6.4 billion euro bailout on Tuesday (Belgian government putting in 3 billion euros, French government put in 1 billion euros, and French state-controlled Caisse des Depots (CDC) 2 billion euros). Dexia stated new funding would boost Tier 1 capital ratio to 14%.

Neuberger Berman, the 69-year old asset management firm founded in 1939 by Roy Neuberger, agreed to be acquired by Bain Capital Partners LLC and Hellman and Friedman LLC.