Nestle made its first concession to activist investor Dan Loeb when it announced Tuesday a $21 billion share buyback plan to boost its stock price. Don't expect Loeb's Third Point to stop there.
Loeb is pushing for Europe's largest company to follow many of its blue-chip peers in sacrificing its top-notch credit ratings to capitalize on rock-bottom interest rates.
Two days after the hedge fund manager announced his stake in Nestle, the company announced the share repurchase plans, which would boost its leverage to 1.5 times a measure of earnings by 2020 from a ratio of about 1 time. That's unlikely to please Loeb, who is urging the packaged food giant to increase leverage to at least 2 times to “produce enormous capacity for share buybacks,” according to a letter to investors in his hedge fund Third Point.
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