It appears as if last
week’s US debt agreement has failed to foster any lasting
confidence on Wall Street, with this week seeing only two deals. The
first of these came on Tuesday, when Sara Lee agreed to sell its
North American refrigerated dough unit to Ralcorp for $545 million.
This comes as both food companies are adjusting strategy; Sara Lee is
preparing to split its food and beverage divisions and Ralcorp is
spinning off cereal making unit ‘Post Foods’ to shareholders. The
buyer was up 1%, while Sara Lee was boosted 4.4% on the news. The
following day it was announced that Capital One would acquire the
US credit card unit of HSBC in a $2.6 billion deal. This follows
HSBC’s sale of almost 200 branches in New York and the layoff of
30,000 employees in a massive cost cutting effort. It is now looking
to concentrate more on emerging markets and corporate lending. The
seller fell 7.6%, while the Capital One rose 0.6%.
