Wall Street's M&A Chatter From April 12: Square, Meredith-Time, PPG-AkzoNobel

The following are the M&A deals, rumors and chatter circulating on Wall Street for Wednesday, April 12, 2017.

Visa Rumored to Bid for Square

The Rumor:

Traders circulated unconfirmed market chatter that Visa, Inc. V is working on a deal to acquire Square, Inc. SQ. The offer is said to be $24 per share in cash, with the deal valued at near $9 billion.

Shares of Twitter TWTR rallied on the report.

Square closed at $17.30, up $0.38.

Meredith Preliminary Bid Said to Fall Short of Time Expectations

The Rumor:

Meredith Corp MDP has made a preliminary offer to acquire Time Inc TIME that is below the magazine publisher's price expectations, according to a report by Reuters.

Sources say Time is looking for more than $20 per share, while the Meredith offer came in below that.

Time has also been pursuing offers from other parties in what is sees as a competitive sale process, sources said.

Time closed at $18.35, down $0.60.

PPG, Elliott, Other Shareholders Disappointed by AkzoNobel's Refusal to Engage

The Investor Feedback:

PPG PPG issued a statement regarding its merger proposal to AkzoNobel AKZOY to form a combined company. PPG said it has communicated with more than 100 AkzoNobel investors, including Elliott Advisors and has received almost unanimous feedback about the disappointment in AkzoNobel’s refusal to engage with PPG and lack of focus on shareholder concerns.

PPG said there was no communication from AkzoNobel regarding the proposal, prior to the public rejection. Elliott Management said it views Akzo Nobel's position rejecting agenda item as "inexplicable."

Akzo Nobel in a press release stated, "[T]he view of the Supervisory Board is that the removal of Mr. Burgmans would be irresponsible, disproportionate, damaging and not in the best interest of the Company, its shareholders and other stakeholders. Therefore the proposed agenda item to remove Mr. Burgmans will be rejected."

PPG closed at $105.06, down $1.00.