Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

European private equity group EQT is in advanced discussions to buy video game services company Keywords Studios for £2.2bn, in the latest potential takeover of a London-listed company.

EQT is negotiating over a cash offer of £25.5 per share. It has already made four unsolicited proposals for the business, all of which were rejected by its board, according to a statement from Keywords.

The EQT offer is a more than 70 per cent premium on the stock’s value at the close of trading on Friday.

The latest proposal is a “significant increase” from the initial bid and the board of Keywords Studios “would be minded to recommend” it to shareholders if a firm bid is made, the company said.

Dublin-based Keywords Studios’s shares rose 5 per cent in Friday trading to close at £14.70 a share.

The company’s board said that it remains confident about its growth plans including expanding through acquisitions, and that EQT supported its strategy.

Keywords Studios, which is listed on London’s junior Aim market, was established in 1998 and has more than 13,000 employees in 26 countries. It provides services from game art to marketing and testing.

Its clients include Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Tencent, and it has worked on games such as Fortnite and League of Legends.

It floated in 2013 at a market valuation of less than £50mn.

More recently, its share price has more than halved from a peak in September 2021, as investors have worried about the potential for some of its services, such as translation, to be supplanted by artificial intelligence.

The company reported record revenues of €780mn in 2023 — up 13 per cent year-on-year — while its pre-tax profit fell 49 per cent to €35mn. It also provides services to film and television production and blamed the US writers’ strike for €20mn of lost revenues in the second half of last year.

Sweden’s EQT is among the biggest private investment firms and has previously bought UK-listed firms such as veterinary pharmaceuticals company Dechra. The group has ​​€242​‌bn of assets under management.

The discussions between EQT and Keywords come as takeover interest in UK-listed companies has reached its highest level since 2018, driven by depressed share prices that are attracting foreign investors.

In April, US private equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to buy UK-listed cyber security company Darktrace in a £4.3bn deal.

Under UK takeover rules, EQT has until June 15 to either make a firm offer or walk away.

A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.

Brett Coomer/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Brett Coomer/AP

A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.

Brett Coomer/AP

HOUSTON — As the Houston area works to clean up and restore power to hundreds of thousands after deadly storms left at least seven people dead, it will do so amid a smog warning and scorching temperatures that could pose health risks.

National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Chenard said on Saturday that highs of around 90 degrees (32.2 C) were expected through the start of the coming week, with heat indexes likely approaching 100 degrees (38 C) by midweek.

“We expect the impact of the heat to gradually increase … we will start to see that heat risk increase Tuesday into Wednesday through Friday,” Chenard said.

The heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when humidity is combined with the air temperature, according to the weather service.

“Don’t overdo yourself during the cleanup process,” the weather service’s Houston office said in a post on the social platform X.

In addition to the heat, the Houston area could face poor air quality during the weekend.

Heavy rainfall was possible in eastern Louisiana and central Alabama on Saturday, and parts of Louisiana were also at risk for flooding.

The Houston Health Department said it would distribute 400 free portable air conditioners to area seniors, people with disabilities and caregivers of disabled children to contend with the heat.

Five cooling centers also were opened — four in Houston and one in Kingwood.

Hundreds of thousands remain without power

A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

David J. Phillip/AP

A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

The widespread destruction of Thursday’s storms brought much of Houston to a standstill. Thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds tore through the city — decimating the facade of one brick building and leaving trees, debris and shattered glass on the streets. A tornado also touched down near the northwest Houston suburb of Cypress.

More than a half-million homes and businesses in Texas remained without electricity by midday Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. Another 21,000 customers were also without power in Louisiana, where strong winds and a suspected tornado hit.

CenterPoint Energy, which has deployed 1,000 employees to the area and is requesting 5,000 more, said power restoration could take several days or longer in some areas, and that customers need to ensure their homes can safely be reconnected.

“In addition to damaging CenterPoint Energy’s electric infrastructure and equipment, severe weather may have caused damage to customer-owned equipment” such as the weatherhead, which is where power enters the home, the company said.

Customers must have repairs completed by a qualified electrician before service can be restored, CenterPoint added.

High-voltage transmission towers that were torn apart and downed power lines pose a twofold challenge for utility companies because the damage affected transmission and distribution systems, according to Alexandria von Meier, a power and energy expert who called that a rare thing. Damage to just the distribution system is more typical, von Meier said.

How quickly repairs are made will depend on a variety of factors, including the time it takes to assess the damage, equipment replacement, roadwork access issues and workforce availability.

The storm caught many off guard

Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

David J. Phillip/AP

Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez reported late Friday that three people died during the storm, including an 85-year-old woman whose home caught fire after being struck by lightning and a 60-year-old man who had tried to use his vehicle to power his oxygen tank.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire previously said at least four other people were killed in the city when the storms swept through Harris County, which includes Houston.

School districts in the Houston area canceled classes Friday for more than 400,000 students and government offices were closed.

Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles said Saturday that he hoped to reopen schools on Monday, but that is dependent upon the restoration of electricity in school buildings.

“If a school doesn’t have power, it will remain closed,” Miles told reporters during a tour of the heavily damaged Sinclair Elementary School.

Whitmire warned that police were out in force, including state troopers sent to the area to prevent looting. He said the speed and intensity of the storm caught many off guard.

Noelle Delgado, executive director of Houston Pets Alive, said she pulled up at the animal rescue on Thursday night and found the dogs and cats — more than 30 in all — uninjured, but the building’s awning had been ripped off, the sign was mangled and water was leaking inside.

She hoped to find foster homes for the animals.

“I could definitely tell that this storm was a little different,” she said. “It felt terrifying.”

State and federal recovery assistance is on the way

In light of the storm damage, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Whitmire both signed disaster declarations, paving the way for state and federal storm recovery assistance.

A separate disaster declaration from President Joe Biden makes federal funding available to people in seven Texas counties — including Harris — that have been affected by severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding since April 26.

Sir Anthony O’Reilly, who has died at the age of 88 after making and losing one of Ireland’s biggest fortunes, was a rugby star who became one of his country’s most celebrated businessmen, philanthropists and raconteurs.

He first came to prominence in the business world as the creator of the successful Kerrygold marketing campaign for Irish dairy products in the early 1960s. But he was already a familiar figure from his dazzling performances on the rugby field. He was capped 29 times for Ireland between 1955 and 1970 and also played for the British Lions.

O’Reilly, who was better known as Tony even after being knighted in 2001 for his services to Northern Ireland, was born in 1936, the son of a senior civil servant. He had a conventional Irish middle class upbringing in Dublin, but it took an unconventional turn when, towards the end of his schooldays, he discovered that his parents were not married to each other. His mother had simply taken O’Reilly as her surname by deed poll. There being no divorce in Ireland, his father was still legally married to another woman by whom he had three children.

After this information became public in a 1990s biography, some speculated that O’Reilly’s unusual background could have driven him to achieve the success that he found in both sport and business.

Whatever the mainspring of his talents, O’Reilly deployed his unusual qualities of intelligence, determination and stamina, coupled with humour and charm, to considerable effect. He began his business career as a management consultant with clients including a maker of garden gnomes whose problems later provided him with a rich store of anecdotes for the many after-dinner speeches he was invited to give.

His first executive role was in Dublin in the early 1960s when he was put in charge of An Bord Bainne, a new government organisation for promoting Ireland’s dairy industry. O’Reilly created a viable production and marketing strategy and, aged 26, propelled Irish butter and cheese into international markets with the launch of Kerrygold.

When a board member protested that there were “no cows in Kerry”, O’Reilly replied, by his own account, that the British housewives the brand was targeting did not know that.

The acclaim for this achievement prompted the Irish government to ask him to take on the job of rescuing the state-owned Erin Foods, which was making heavy losses in the mid 1960s. He prudently refused to do so unless he could also run Erin’s profitable parent company, Irish Sugar.

Erin was to be the key to the next three decades of his business life. Looking for an international partner to improve its distribution and credibility in the UK, O’Reilly set up a joint company with Heinz. The US ketchup maker soon asked O’Reilly to become its UK managing director.

Over the next two decades, O’Reilly rose to the top of Heinz, becoming chief executive in 1979 and, in 1987, its first non-family chair. He transformed the company’s sales and profits, and became its largest individual shareholder, but its stock was falling by the time he retired in 2000 as consolidation among rivals left Heinz in the industry’s second tier.

His early success at Heinz had given O’Reilly the financial resources and contacts required to launch an investment company in Dublin in 1971. Through this he was able to pursue a parallel business career in Ireland as he shuttled between Heinz’s Pittsburgh headquarters and Castlemartin, the art-filled stately home on the River Liffey where Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton were among his guests.

The most successful of his ventures was the newspaper group, Independent News & Media, where he bought effective control for £1mn in 1973 and which developed extensive interests in the UK, France, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

O’Reilly bought Waterford Wedgwood in 1990, refinancing and restructuring the Anglo-Irish crystal and china company and hailing Waterford crystal as one of the four great Irish brands, alongside Guinness, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Kerrygold.

In 2000 he told the Financial Times of his ambition to build Waterford Wedgwood into a global luxury goods group to rival Gucci or Richemont. He poured much of his fortune into the effort, only for the indebted group to fall into receivership in 2009.

That same year he lost a fierce battle for control of INM to Denis O’Brien, the Irish telecoms tycoon, costing him the dividend income his newspapers had once provided. Pursued by creditors, he sold Castlemartin and other prized assets but by 2015 the man reputed to have been Ireland’s first billionaire was declared bankrupt.

It was a jarring fall for someone once known for his philanthropy. Most notably, O’Reilly had created the Ireland Fund which became a major conduit for channelling finance into constructive community projects on both sides of the Irish border.

O’Reilly was married twice. He had six children by his first wife, Susan. His second wife, Chryss, whom he married in 1991, was a member of the leading Greek shipping family of Goulandris. A noted horse breeder, she died last year.

On Saturday night, Simon Harris, Ireland’s taoiseach, described O’Reilly as “a giant of sport, business and media” who left “permanent legacies in all three”.  

O’Reilly himself was fond of quoting the sportsman CB Fry’s dictum: “It is incumbent upon you to be a whole man, to be an all-rounder”. It was an epithet he lived up to.