Contributed by Martin Mitchell of the Corporate Training Group

In case you were too busy to have kept up with all the news, contributor Martin Mitchell has gathered some important market events from last week to help you start this week well informed:

Mergers and Acquisition

• Two of the five consortia considering bids for London’s Gatwick airport have dropped out – the Gatwick Future Partnership led by Babcock & Brown’s European Infrastructure Fund and Deutsche Bank’s RREEF infrastructure fund, and the consortium made up of 3i’s infrastructure arm and two Canadian pension schemes have both pulled out. The three groups still in the bidding are Global Infrastructure Partners (including Credit Suisse and General Electric), Lysander Gatwick Investment (including Citi Infrastructure Investors) and Manchester Airport Group. Bids are expected to exceed £1.65bn.
• Chinese group Minmetals has unveiled a friendly A$2.6bn takeover offer for Australian miner Oz Minerals.
• BG Group has increased its cash bid for Pure Energy Resources, the Australian gas company and made it unconditional, indicating it is prepared to accept a minority stake. The bid values Pure at £450m, against a competing bid from Arrow Energy of Australia that mixes cash and shares and is worth around £398m.
• US media company Liberty Media has agreed to invest up to $530m for 40% of Sirius XM, a US satellite radio company.
• Japanese beer company Kirin is spending in excess of $1.2bn buying a 49% stake in the Philippines’ largest brewer San Miguel Corp.

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by Anna Collins, Esq. (Portland, Maine)

Just as success means different things to different people, obtaining success for women involves diverse choices and paths. According to a recent Huffington Post article, while some women believe it is necessary to navigate through the gender dynamics in business by focusing on gender when necessary, others actually ignore gender as a blatant strategy for success. In order to understand the trend of “ignoring gender” as a means to achieve success, we spoke to several women about their own paths to success. Of course, “ignoring gender” means different things to different people.

For Marlene Mitchell Gordon, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for Burger King Corporation , “ignoring gender” means treating each person as a human being rather than male or female. She recalls how one male colleague seemed uncomfortable with her. When she realized that he had never before worked with a woman of color, she proceeded to ignore gender and race by working to build a relationship with him focused on getting to know him as a person and allowing him to get to know her. By taking initiative to learn about his background and experiences and sharing her background and experiences with him, they found that they shared common experiences. This led to them forging a strong business relationship based on mutual respect and trust. As a result, Ms. Gordon found that her gender and race were quickly non-issues.

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