U.S. markets are set to open in positive territory on Monday, with stocks rebounding from Friday losses.
Shares of Leucadia National (Trades, Portfolio) Corp. (LUK, Financial) gained ground on premarket trading after announcing the sale of 48% of National Beef at a $2.3 billion enterprise value to Marfrig Global Foods S.A. for $900 million in cash. The ownership stake will be reduced to 31%. The estimated pre-tax gain of the deal is $800 million to $850 million.
The company also agreed to sell all of its stake in auto dealer group Garcadia and associated real estate to current partners the Garff family for $675 million in enterprise value or $375 million in cash and $50 million in redeemable preferred equity, with a pre-tax gain of $220 million. Also, the company will change its name to Jefferies Financial Group Inc.
Finally, the board will increase the stock buyback program to 25 million shares from the 12.5 million remaining under the current program.
Gainers
· Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT, Financial)
· Netflix Inc. (NFLX, Financial)
· Intel Corp. (INTC, Financial)
· NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA, Financial)
Losers
· Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY, Financial)
· Under Armour Inc. (UA, Financial)
· Ventas Inc. (VTR, Financial)
Global markets
The main European stock markets closed lower. The U.K.'s FTSE lost 0.04%, France's CAC advanced 0.11%, Germany's Dax slid 0.03% and Spain's Ibex gained 0.82%.
In Asia, India’s BSE Sensex gained 0.48%, China´s SSE Composite advanced 0.23%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1.29% and Japan's Nikkei gained 0.51%.
(Disclosure: The author holds no positions in any stocks mentioned)
