James Fontanella-Khan

Widely feared boss of Starboard Value often befriends the corporate leaders he is targeting

Boutique adviser’s work for two former executives has threatened its lucrative ties to the vaccine maker

Fund run by Jeff Smith builds $1bn stake in vaccine maker and pitches shake-up plan

Paul Taubman advisory firm to buy former Morgan Stanley banker May Nasrallah’s deNovo Partners

Billionaire investor secures funding to improve $4.3bn offer to media scion Shari Redstone

One big thing to start: Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is heading for a huge majority in the UK general election, sending Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives crashing out of office after 14 years. Follow live here. In today’s newsletter: The announcement of Soho House’s opening in Milan in 2026 received a lot of media attention last month, but the renovation of the palazzo on the central San Babila square is still two years away. London-based private equity firm Three Hills Capital Partners, instead…

Elliott Management is setting up a company to invest at least $1bn to buy mining assets globally, as it seeks to take advantage of the depressed valuation of groups operating in the sector, people familiar with the matter said. The New York investment firm’s new venture, Hyperion, will be led by Sandeep Biswas, the former chief executive of gold mining group Newcrest Mining and a veteran dealmaker and operator in the sector, those people added. The mandate is to buy across all assets, including…

When Gerry Cardinale left Goldman Sachs in 2012 he underestimated just how hard it would be to launch a successful private equity business without the balance sheet of one of the world’s most prestigious investment banks. “At Goldman you pushed a button and $20bn would show up. When I started RedBird, I had no relationships with capital . . . [it] was basically an ‘oops’ moment like the Road Runner scene where the coyote goes off the cliff, looks down and says ‘Oh, shit’,” says Cardinale, from…

Predicting whether dealmaking makes a comeback this year may be a fool’s errand given the unprecedented geopolitical uncertainty we live in and will continue to experience for the foreseeable future. Yet, after a year when mergers and acquisitions activity sank below $3tn for the first time in a decade, there are some encouraging signs that 2024 will witness a pick-up in deals. Last year the value of total transactions struck globally fell 17 per cent to about $2.9tn, according to London Stock…

Two megadeals that will reorder the US energy industry have raised hopes of a gusher of advisory fees in an otherwise moribund M&A market and set up a battle between the sector’s leading banks: Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Chevron’s $53bn takeover of renowned operator Hess and ExxonMobil’s $60bn acquisition of shale specialist Pioneer have made oil and gas a rare bright spot for Wall Street’s dealmakers. Merger and acquisition activity in the sector is up 52 per cent so far this year, with…