MONTREAL – With bids due this week, perhaps this morning, and rumors swirling all around, here’s where the perplexing BCE bid brouhaha stands right now.
* According to a report in the Globe and Mail, both Onex Corp. and the Caisse de depot et placement due Quebec have decided not to take part in the bid for BCE with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and U.S. private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts Co., potentially scuttling that bid.
* The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan told Reuters that it will definitely make a bid. Teachers is currently Bell’s largest shareholder with 6.3% of the shares and is teamed up with Providence Equity Partners.
* Catalyst Asset Management’s "stapled security" option announced last week, which some have said looks like something close to an income trust format, places a share value on BCE in the neighbourhood of $42 to $52 a share, the company announced today.
* Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters he isn’t about to wade into all of this, leaving it up to Canadian regulatory bodies to decide on what’s right or if a Telus-Bell merger is good for Canadians or not.
* Cerberus Capital is still planning a bid, with the help of Canadian firms CanWest Global and Canadian billionaire Richard Li.
*Any speculation that Shaw Communications is involved, Jim Shaw told Cartt.ca, is "bull."
* Canadians apparently can’t decide what they think on all the fuss over BCE.
* Depending on who you listen to, the bids are due this morning or Friday – or even that the board will pick a winner as early as Friday.
* And while all this has gone on, the Department of National Defense has awarded a $200 million contract to Telus that Bell used to own, according to the Globe.
