- Morrisons directors now have their eye on a different suitor
- Facebook could monopolise the virtual world, if Tesla robots haven’t taken over the planet by then
Morrisons is propositioned – again
Wm Morrison (MRW) must be starting to feel like the prettiest girl at the dance.
In the latest round of a protracted bidding war, private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice has increased its offer for the UK’s fourth-largest supermarket group to 285p per share. That values Morrisons £36.3m higher than the previous highest offer of 270p per share, from a consortium of bidders led by Fortress Investment Group.
After previously recommending the Fortress bid to shareholders, Morrisons is now backing the takeover by CD&R. But the supermarket’s share price has soared so high on the back of the bidding contest that it is now trading at a slight premium to CD&R’s offer, suggesting that investors think the battle is far from over.
Private equity’s recent raid on the UK markets, of which the scrap over Morrisons is the most high-profile example, is now even raising alarm bells among the general public. But what is drawing these buyout firms to old Blighty? Our recent cover feature gives the lowdown. OT
Will Facebook monopolise the Matrix?
Your mum’s on Facebook (US:FB), your kids are on Instagram, and everyone else you know is on WhatsApp. That appears to be the basis for the US Federal Trade Commission's claim that Mark Zuckerberg’s company has gained monopoly power over the social media market.
The regulator initially filed a lawsuit in December, in an attempt to force the social media giant to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. But after that case was thrown out by a federal judge in June, the FTC is doubling down on its pursuit of Facebook, adding new details and alleging the company has neutralised competitors by denying them access to its platform.
Whether or not Facebook has monopolised social media, the more pertinent question may now be whether it can monopolise the “metaverse”. That’s what techies are calling the next generation of the internet: a sort of online universe where apparently we will all be living parallel lives in the future (a bit like The Matrix).
Zuckerberg has already said he now wants Facebook to be a metaverse company, not a social media company. Yesterday he unveiled Horizon Workrooms, a new app where workers can come together in a virtual reality office using Facebook’s Oculus headsets. The future of homeworking? Personally, we don’t plan on expensing the Financial Times for a batch of virtual reality glasses anytime soon. OT
AI Day and Tesla bots
It’s safe to say that one thing no one expected from Tesla’s (US:TSLA) hotly anticipated “AI Day” was a man dancing in a onesie on stage, pretending to be a robot.
But that’s what we got as Elon Musk surprised the world by announcing the humanoid Tesla Bot, expected to be at prototype stage next year.
The robot was announced as the logical next step for Tesla, with Musk framing the cars they currently make as "semi-sentient robots on wheels". The bots are intended to "navigate through a world built for humans" and complete "repetitive and boring tasks".
Thankfully Musk reassured the world that the bots would be programmed with a top speed of 5mph. So if it comes to an 'iRobot'-style ending, we can at least outrun them. Tesla’s shares were down more than 2 per cent after Musk’s presentation. LF
