Australia Blocks A.D.M. Bid for GrainCorp

Activist investors like Carl C. Icahn, Daniel S. Loeb and William A. Ackman are getting deep-pocketed imitators.

Some of the biggest public pension funds, which have sought to influence companies for years, are now starting to emulate these investors by engaging with, and sometimes seeking to oust, directors of companies whose stock they own.

Anne Simpson, director of corporate governance at the California Public Employees’ Pension Fund, the largest United States pension plan with $279 billion in assets, says “board coups” this year that led to the departure of directors at Hewlett-Packard, JPMorgan Chase and Occidental Petroleum show “how shareholder activism is evolving from barbarians at the gate to acting like owners.”

Calpers is one of several big United States public funds that have played roles in shareholder uprisings in recent years at companies that included Chesapeake Energy, Nabors Industries and Massey Energy. While some of the revolts were led by labor groups or acivist investors, Calpers has often cast its votes alongside them.

Ira M. Millstein, a lawyer who specializes in corporate governance at Weil Gotshal & Manges, says it is significant that “the biggest pension fund in the U.S. is taking an activist role, going to companies that aren’t doing well and saying, ‘You really ought to change.’ ”

The second-largest public fund, the $176 billion California State Teachers Retirement System, went so far as to co-sponsor a proposal with the activist fund Relational Investors to break up the Timken Company, the maker of steel and bearings, criticizing the outsize representation of the founding Timken family, which held three of 11 board seats while holding just 10 percent of the stock. Four months after the proposal won a 53 percent vote, Timken acquiesced to a breakup in September.

Anne Sheehan, director of corporate governance at Calstrs, says pension fund “activism and engagement has stepped up quite a bit more as a result of the financial crisis when we all lost a lot of value. As universal owners, how can we not assert our rights and develop a relationship with companies in our portfolio?”

The big public funds have successfully campaigned in the last decade for the right of shareholders to elect each director individually by majority vote on an annual basis, more recently using the procedure to seek the ouster of directors who receive a heavy no vote. While the companies often are not legally bound to replace directors who do not win a majority, some directors have resigned voluntarily.

One of the last big holdouts against majority voting was Apple, where Calpers waged a three-year battle with steadily increasing shareholder votes, which culminated in Apple’s agreement in 2012 to allow electing directors by majority vote.

The adoption of majority voting “has made directors far more willing to engage,” said Ann Yerger, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors. Nell Minow, the co-founder of the governance advisory firm GMI Ratings, says there has been “a shift in tactics” among big activist investors “from shareholder proposals to engagement and director replacement.”

This year may have marked a “pivot point where the central focus of shareholder activism shifted” to “direct challenges to board members,” according to a report in August by Institutional Shareholders Services, which advises investors on proxy voting and other governance issues.

At JPMorgan, for example, Calpers and other investors backed a call by Change-to-Win, a labor group, for the ouster of three directors on the board’s risk committee whose qualifications were questioned after the bank suffered a $6.2 billion loss on what became known as the London whale trades.

After receiving votes of just 53 and 59 percent at the bank’s annual meeting in May, Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, and David M. Cote, the chairman and chief executive of Honeywell International, stepped down in July. The bank also designated Lee R. Raymond, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to be the lead outside director after defeating an investor campaign to separate the jobs of chief executive and chairman, boh held by Jamie Dimon.

Calpers also voted for a boardroom shake-up at Hewlett-Packard, where two directors, G. Kennedy Thompson, chairman of the audit committee, and John L. Hammergren, chairman of the finance and investment committee, came under fire after the company took $19 billion in write-downs on three expensive acquisitions.

At a meeting in Washington in February, a month before HP’s annual meeting, the company’s chairman, Raymond J. Lane, and another director faced a group of about 15 institutional investors including Calstrs and the $144 billion New York City pension funds. While the directors “tried to defend the board processes” in reviewing the acquisitions, “it was too little, too late,” said Michael Garland, head of corporate governance for the New York City comptroller, John C. Liu. After votes of just 59 percent for Mr. Lane, 55 percent for Mr. Thompson and 54 percent for Mr. Hammergren, Mr. Lane stepped down as chairman and the two others also left.

Calpers has also backed director reshuffles or resignations over executive pay at Occidental and Chesapeake and over safety at Massey. Ms. Simpson says stocks of companies subject to such actions have beaten the market â€" some critics dispute that â€" and Calpers plans to increase the assets it has devoted to those causes. In recent years, she says, “what once upon a time had been viewed as sniping has become viewed as responsible ownership.”

Sometimes companies work harmoniously with investors. At the UnitedHealth Group, where Calpers had the right to appoint one director unilaterally under the terms of the settlement of a past lawsuit, Ms. Simpson worked with the chairwoman of the nominating and corporate governance committee, Michele J. Hooper, in 2012 to find a mutually acceptable nominee, Rodger A. Lawson, a former president of Fidelity Investments.

Many companies are also deploying board members to gain the support of big investors in case they are confronted by activist hedge funds seeking management or strategy changes or fielding their own director candidates through proxy votes. “We advise our clients that it makes a great deal of sense for directors to meet with the major shareholders,” said Martin Lipton, who represents corporate boards at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.

But other companies resist shareholder pressure. At Nabors Industries, an energy services company, where investors have complained about oversize executive severance pay, two directors, John Yearwood and John V. Lombardi, received votes of just 47 percent and 44 percent last June. But the Nabors board rejected resignations by the two directors, which they had tendered pursuant to company bylaws, and they continue to serve.

Ms. Simpson, who joined Calpers in 2009, cut her teeth in governance at the World Bank. There she worked on a task force led by Mr. Millstein that barnstormed emerging markets in the late 1990s to help local officials understand what governance protections global investors sought. She and Mr. Millstein have since taught corporate governance together at Yale.

Calpers, which once published an annual list of companies it said had poor corporate governance, has halted its so-called name and shame program in favor of a behind-the-scenes approach, which Ms. Simpson calls “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The stick, she adds, “needs to be used sparingly.” She added, “The issue needs to be fundamental, or when you have a demonstrable failure of oversight.”

Because Calpers indexes much of its stock market investments, it owns 0.5 percent or more of most public companies. As long-term investors who plan to hold on to the stock, Mr. Millstein says, Calpers can credibly tell companies “we’re willing to work with you.”

Calpers sets its own priorities and doesn’t slavishly follow activist investors or proxy advisory services, Ms. Simpson notes. She said she urged a separation of the chairman and chief executive jobs at JPMorgan in her first meeting with Mr. Dimon in 2010, before the trading blowup.

What is more, she adds, the fund’s efforts depend on gaining widespread support among other mainstream investors. She often works with other big funds to reach common goals, like soliciting votes for governance proposals by the New York City funds at Chesapeake and Nabors.

Gianna McCarthy, director of corporate governance at the $161 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, adds, “I think there is more of an ability for public funds to register their dissatisfaction with directors and eventually have them resign from boards.”

Australia Blocks A.D.M. Bid for GrainCorp

HONG KONG â€" The Australian government rejected on Friday a $2.7 billion takeover bid for GrainCorp by Archer Daniels Midland, the American agribusiness giant, saying that the deal was against the national interest.

In a surprise decision, the Australian treasurer, Joe Hockey, announced that the country’s foreign investment review board had failed to reach a consensus on the matter and that he personally made the call blocking the deal, nodding to opposition from smaller grain growers and the general public.

‘‘Many industry participants, particularly growers in eastern Australia, have expressed concern that the proposed acquisition could reduce competition and impede growers’ ability to access the grain storage, logistics and distribution network,’’ Mr. Hockey said on Friday in a statement.

‘‘Allowing it to proceed could risk undermining public support for the foreign investment regime and ongoing foreign investment more generally,’’ he said. ‘‘This would not be in our national interest.’’

The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, who leads the conservative Liberal-National coalition that took office in September, ending the Labor Party’s six years of leadership, had pledged that the country would remain ‘‘open for business’’ during his term.

But the rejection of the A.D.M. bid for GrainCorp may raise concerns among foreign investors, and the decision was immediately criticized by the opposition.

‘‘This decision by the treasurer means that Australia will miss out on investment it should have received â€"jobs won’t be created that should have been created and the Australian economy will be worse off,’’ said Chris Bowen, the opposition spokesman on treasury issues, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

‘‘If you want to ensure Australia’s food security, then you ensure investment in Australia’s food and agricultural industry,’’ Mr. Bowen said. ‘‘Whether that investment be foreign investment or domestic investment, you ensure investment.’’

A.D.M., based in Decatur, Illinois, had sought to acquire GrainCorp for more than a year, and this past week it offered to invest more in Australia if it succeeded in its bid for one of the country’s biggest grain producers. The sweetened deal was worth 3 billion Australian dollars, or $2.7 billion, in cash and dividends, with A.D.M. pledging to invest an additional 500 million dollars in the domestic grain business.

By its own estimates, GrainCorp handles 75 percent of eastern Australia’s annual grain production and 90 percent of that region’s bulk grain exports. The deal would have helped the American company expand its international footprint and tap rising demand from growing and increasingly wealthy countries in Asia, including China, a top export market for Australian agricultural products.

‘‘Throughout this process, we worked constructively to create an arrangement that would be in Australia’s best interests and made substantial commitments to address issues that were important to stakeholders,’’ Patricia A. Woertz, the chairwoman and chief executive of A.D.M., said in a statement. ‘‘We are disappointed by this decision.’’

Shares in GrainCorp fell as much as 26 percent in Sydney on Friday, briefly touching a 20-month low of 8.25 dollars before recovering a bit. The stock closed on Thursday at 11.20 dollars, still well below A.D.M.’s bid of 12.20 dollars a share, reflecting investors’ skepticism that the deal would succeed.

Despite the rejection, A.D.M. retains a 19.8 percent stake in GrainCorp. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Hockey, the treasurer, said he would allow the American company to increase its stake to as much as 24.9 percent.

‘‘Of the more than 130 applications that have come to my desk since the election, only one has been declined and this is it,’’ Mr. Hockey said. ‘‘I have acted in the national interest. The fact is the industry is going through transition and now is not the right time to have all the major players foreign owned.’’

Australia Blocks A.D.M. Bid for GrainCorp

Activist investors like Carl C. Icahn, Daniel S. Loeb and William A. Ackman are getting deep-pocketed imitators.

Some of the biggest public pension funds, which have sought to influence companies for years, are now starting to emulate these investors by engaging with, and sometimes seeking to oust, directors of companies whose stock they own.

Anne Simpson, director of corporate governance at the California Public Employees’ Pension Fund, the largest United States pension plan with $279 billion in assets, says “board coups” this year that led to the departure of directors at Hewlett-Packard, JPMorgan Chase and Occidental Petroleum show “how shareholder activism is evolving from barbarians at the gate to acting like owners.”

Calpers is one of several big United States public funds that have played roles in shareholder uprisings in recent years at companies that included Chesapeake Energy, Nabors Industries and Massey Energy. While some of the revolts were led by labor groups or acivist investors, Calpers has often cast its votes alongside them.

Ira M. Millstein, a lawyer who specializes in corporate governance at Weil Gotshal & Manges, says it is significant that “the biggest pension fund in the U.S. is taking an activist role, going to companies that aren’t doing well and saying, ‘You really ought to change.’ ”

The second-largest public fund, the $176 billion California State Teachers Retirement System, went so far as to co-sponsor a proposal with the activist fund Relational Investors to break up the Timken Company, the maker of steel and bearings, criticizing the outsize representation of the founding Timken family, which held three of 11 board seats while holding just 10 percent of the stock. Four months after the proposal won a 53 percent vote, Timken acquiesced to a breakup in September.

Anne Sheehan, director of corporate governance at Calstrs, says pension fund “activism and engagement has stepped up quite a bit more as a result of the financial crisis when we all lost a lot of value. As universal owners, how can we not assert our rights and develop a relationship with companies in our portfolio?”

The big public funds have successfully campaigned in the last decade for the right of shareholders to elect each director individually by majority vote on an annual basis, more recently using the procedure to seek the ouster of directors who receive a heavy no vote. While the companies often are not legally bound to replace directors who do not win a majority, some directors have resigned voluntarily.

One of the last big holdouts against majority voting was Apple, where Calpers waged a three-year battle with steadily increasing shareholder votes, which culminated in Apple’s agreement in 2012 to allow electing directors by majority vote.

The adoption of majority voting “has made directors far more willing to engage,” said Ann Yerger, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors. Nell Minow, the co-founder of the governance advisory firm GMI Ratings, says there has been “a shift in tactics” among big activist investors “from shareholder proposals to engagement and director replacement.”

This year may have marked a “pivot point where the central focus of shareholder activism shifted” to “direct challenges to board members,” according to a report in August by Institutional Shareholders Services, which advises investors on proxy voting and other governance issues.

At JPMorgan, for example, Calpers and other investors backed a call by Change-to-Win, a labor group, for the ouster of three directors on the board’s risk committee whose qualifications were questioned after the bank suffered a $6.2 billion loss on what became known as the London whale trades.

After receiving votes of just 53 and 59 percent at the bank’s annual meeting in May, Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, and David M. Cote, the chairman and chief executive of Honeywell International, stepped down in July. The bank also designated Lee R. Raymond, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to be the lead outside director after defeating an investor campaign to separate the jobs of chief executive and chairman, boh held by Jamie Dimon.

Calpers also voted for a boardroom shake-up at Hewlett-Packard, where two directors, G. Kennedy Thompson, chairman of the audit committee, and John L. Hammergren, chairman of the finance and investment committee, came under fire after the company took $19 billion in write-downs on three expensive acquisitions.

At a meeting in Washington in February, a month before HP’s annual meeting, the company’s chairman, Raymond J. Lane, and another director faced a group of about 15 institutional investors including Calstrs and the $144 billion New York City pension funds. While the directors “tried to defend the board processes” in reviewing the acquisitions, “it was too little, too late,” said Michael Garland, head of corporate governance for the New York City comptroller, John C. Liu. After votes of just 59 percent for Mr. Lane, 55 percent for Mr. Thompson and 54 percent for Mr. Hammergren, Mr. Lane stepped down as chairman and the two others also left.

Calpers has also backed director reshuffles or resignations over executive pay at Occidental and Chesapeake and over safety at Massey. Ms. Simpson says stocks of companies subject to such actions have beaten the market â€" some critics dispute that â€" and Calpers plans to increase the assets it has devoted to those causes. In recent years, she says, “what once upon a time had been viewed as sniping has become viewed as responsible ownership.”

Sometimes companies work harmoniously with investors. At the UnitedHealth Group, where Calpers had the right to appoint one director unilaterally under the terms of the settlement of a past lawsuit, Ms. Simpson worked with the chairwoman of the nominating and corporate governance committee, Michele J. Hooper, in 2012 to find a mutually acceptable nominee, Rodger A. Lawson, a former president of Fidelity Investments.

Many companies are also deploying board members to gain the support of big investors in case they are confronted by activist hedge funds seeking management or strategy changes or fielding their own director candidates through proxy votes. “We advise our clients that it makes a great deal of sense for directors to meet with the major shareholders,” said Martin Lipton, who represents corporate boards at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.

But other companies resist shareholder pressure. At Nabors Industries, an energy services company, where investors have complained about oversize executive severance pay, two directors, John Yearwood and John V. Lombardi, received votes of just 47 percent and 44 percent last June. But the Nabors board rejected resignations by the two directors, which they had tendered pursuant to company bylaws, and they continue to serve.

Ms. Simpson, who joined Calpers in 2009, cut her teeth in governance at the World Bank. There she worked on a task force led by Mr. Millstein that barnstormed emerging markets in the late 1990s to help local officials understand what governance protections global investors sought. She and Mr. Millstein have since taught corporate governance together at Yale.

Calpers, which once published an annual list of companies it said had poor corporate governance, has halted its so-called name and shame program in favor of a behind-the-scenes approach, which Ms. Simpson calls “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The stick, she adds, “needs to be used sparingly.” She added, “The issue needs to be fundamental, or when you have a demonstrable failure of oversight.”

Because Calpers indexes much of its stock market investments, it owns 0.5 percent or more of most public companies. As long-term investors who plan to hold on to the stock, Mr. Millstein says, Calpers can credibly tell companies “we’re willing to work with you.”

Calpers sets its own priorities and doesn’t slavishly follow activist investors or proxy advisory services, Ms. Simpson notes. She said she urged a separation of the chairman and chief executive jobs at JPMorgan in her first meeting with Mr. Dimon in 2010, before the trading blowup.

What is more, she adds, the fund’s efforts depend on gaining widespread support among other mainstream investors. She often works with other big funds to reach common goals, like soliciting votes for governance proposals by the New York City funds at Chesapeake and Nabors.

Gianna McCarthy, director of corporate governance at the $161 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, adds, “I think there is more of an ability for public funds to register their dissatisfaction with directors and eventually have them resign from boards.”

Some Big Public Pension Funds Are Behaving Like Activist Investors

Activist investors like Carl C. Icahn, Daniel S. Loeb and William A. Ackman are getting deep-pocketed imitators.

Some of the biggest public pension funds, which have sought to influence companies for years, are now starting to emulate these investors by engaging with, and sometimes seeking to oust, directors of companies whose stock they own.

Anne Simpson, director of corporate governance at the California Public Employees’ Pension Fund, the largest United States pension plan with $279 billion in assets, says “board coups” this year that led to the departure of directors at Hewlett-Packard, JPMorgan Chase and Occidental Petroleum show “how shareholder activism is evolving from barbarians at the gate to acting like owners.”

Calpers is one of several big United States public funds that have played roles in shareholder uprisings in recent years at companies that included Chesapeake Energy, Nabors Industries and Massey Energy. While some of the revolts were led by labor groups or acivist investors, Calpers has often cast its votes alongside them.

Ira M. Millstein, a lawyer who specializes in corporate governance at Weil Gotshal & Manges, says it is significant that “the biggest pension fund in the U.S. is taking an activist role, going to companies that aren’t doing well and saying, ‘You really ought to change.’ ”

The second-largest public fund, the $176 billion California State Teachers Retirement System, went so far as to co-sponsor a proposal with the activist fund Relational Investors to break up the Timken Company, the maker of steel and bearings, criticizing the outsize representation of the founding Timken family, which held three of 11 board seats while holding just 10 percent of the stock. Four months after the proposal won a 53 percent vote, Timken acquiesced to a breakup in September.

Anne Sheehan, director of corporate governance at Calstrs, says pension fund “activism and engagement has stepped up quite a bit more as a result of the financial crisis when we all lost a lot of value. As universal owners, how can we not assert our rights and develop a relationship with companies in our portfolio?”

The big public funds have successfully campaigned in the last decade for the right of shareholders to elect each director individually by majority vote on an annual basis, more recently using the procedure to seek the ouster of directors who receive a heavy no vote. While the companies often are not legally bound to replace directors who do not win a majority, some directors have resigned voluntarily.

One of the last big holdouts against majority voting was Apple, where Calpers waged a three-year battle with steadily increasing shareholder votes, which culminated in Apple’s agreement in 2012 to allow electing directors by majority vote.

The adoption of majority voting “has made directors far more willing to engage,” said Ann Yerger, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors. Nell Minow, the co-founder of the governance advisory firm GMI Ratings, says there has been “a shift in tactics” among big activist investors “from shareholder proposals to engagement and director replacement.”

This year may have marked a “pivot point where the central focus of shareholder activism shifted” to “direct challenges to board members,” according to a report in August by Institutional Shareholders Services, which advises investors on proxy voting and other governance issues.

At JPMorgan, for example, Calpers and other investors backed a call by Change-to-Win, a labor group, for the ouster of three directors on the board’s risk committee whose qualifications were questioned after the bank suffered a $6.2 billion loss on what became known as the London whale trades.

After receiving votes of just 53 and 59 percent at the bank’s annual meeting in May, Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, and David M. Cote, the chairman and chief executive of Honeywell International, stepped down in July. The bank also designated Lee R. Raymond, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to be the lead outside director after defeating an investor campaign to separate the jobs of chief executive and chairman, boh held by Jamie Dimon.

Calpers also voted for a boardroom shake-up at Hewlett-Packard, where two directors, G. Kennedy Thompson, chairman of the audit committee, and John L. Hammergren, chairman of the finance and investment committee, came under fire after the company took $19 billion in write-downs on three expensive acquisitions.

At a meeting in Washington in February, a month before HP’s annual meeting, the company’s chairman, Raymond J. Lane, and another director faced a group of about 15 institutional investors including Calstrs and the $144 billion New York City pension funds. While the directors “tried to defend the board processes” in reviewing the acquisitions, “it was too little, too late,” said Michael Garland, head of corporate governance for the New York City comptroller, John C. Liu. After votes of just 59 percent for Mr. Lane, 55 percent for Mr. Thompson and 54 percent for Mr. Hammergren, Mr. Lane stepped down as chairman and the two others also left.

Calpers has also backed director reshuffles or resignations over executive pay at Occidental and Chesapeake and over safety at Massey. Ms. Simpson says stocks of companies subject to such actions have beaten the market â€" some critics dispute that â€" and Calpers plans to increase the assets it has devoted to those causes. In recent years, she says, “what once upon a time had been viewed as sniping has become viewed as responsible ownership.”

Sometimes companies work harmoniously with investors. At the UnitedHealth Group, where Calpers had the right to appoint one director unilaterally under the terms of the settlement of a past lawsuit, Ms. Simpson worked with the chairwoman of the nominating and corporate governance committee, Michele J. Hooper, in 2012 to find a mutually acceptable nominee, Rodger A. Lawson, a former president of Fidelity Investments.

Many companies are also deploying board members to gain the support of big investors in case they are confronted by activist hedge funds seeking management or strategy changes or fielding their own director candidates through proxy votes. “We advise our clients that it makes a great deal of sense for directors to meet with the major shareholders,” said Martin Lipton, who represents corporate boards at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.

But other companies resist shareholder pressure. At Nabors Industries, an energy services company, where investors have complained about oversize executive severance pay, two directors, John Yearwood and John V. Lombardi, received votes of just 47 percent and 44 percent last June. But the Nabors board rejected resignations by the two directors, which they had tendered pursuant to company bylaws, and they continue to serve.

Ms. Simpson, who joined Calpers in 2009, cut her teeth in governance at the World Bank. There she worked on a task force led by Mr. Millstein that barnstormed emerging markets in the late 1990s to help local officials understand what governance protections global investors sought. She and Mr. Millstein have since taught corporate governance together at Yale.

Calpers, which once published an annual list of companies it said had poor corporate governance, has halted its so-called name and shame program in favor of a behind-the-scenes approach, which Ms. Simpson calls “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The stick, she adds, “needs to be used sparingly.” She added, “The issue needs to be fundamental, or when you have a demonstrable failure of oversight.”

Because Calpers indexes much of its stock market investments, it owns 0.5 percent or more of most public companies. As long-term investors who plan to hold on to the stock, Mr. Millstein says, Calpers can credibly tell companies “we’re willing to work with you.”

Calpers sets its own priorities and doesn’t slavishly follow activist investors or proxy advisory services, Ms. Simpson notes. She said she urged a separation of the chairman and chief executive jobs at JPMorgan in her first meeting with Mr. Dimon in 2010, before the trading blowup.

What is more, she adds, the fund’s efforts depend on gaining widespread support among other mainstream investors. She often works with other big funds to reach common goals, like soliciting votes for governance proposals by the New York City funds at Chesapeake and Nabors.

Gianna McCarthy, director of corporate governance at the $161 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, adds, “I think there is more of an ability for public funds to register their dissatisfaction with directors and eventually have them resign from boards.”

Orange to Sell Dominican Telecom Business

LONDON - The French telecommunications company Orange has reached an agreement to sell its Dominican Republic operations to the Luxembourg cable and broadband provider Altice for $1.4 billion.

The deal strengthens Altice’s presence in the Caribbean, where it offers cable television and mobile phone services in Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana. In October, Altice announced that it was buying a controlling stake in the Dominican Republic cable and mobile operator Tricom.

Orange Dominicana had about 3.4 million subscribers at the end of September. Combined, Orange Dominicana and Tricom will have about 4 million subscribers.

The deal is subject to approval by Dominican authorities and will be submitted to Orange’s board of directors next month.

The sale is the latest in a wave of restructuring by European telecom companies as they look to consolidate or streamline their operations.

Vivendi announced plans earlier this week to spin off its mobile and telecom unit SFR after selling a 53 percent stake in its Moroccan business earlier this month for 4.2 billion euros, or about $5.7 billion.

Earlier this month, Deutsche Telekom announced a deal to sell a 70 percent stake in its online classified advertising business for €1.5 billion and PPF Group is selling a controlling stake in the Spanish telecom company, Telefónica, for €2.5 billion.

In September, the British telecom company Vodafone agreed to sell its 45 percent stake in Verizon Communications’ wireless unit in the United States for $130 billion, the largest deal so far this year. The American telecom giant AT&T is also considering making acquisitions in Europe as early as next year.

UBS Combines Investment Banking Businesses

LONDON - The Swiss bank UBS is combining its currency, interest rates and credit trading businesses into one unit, according to a memo circulated at the bank earlier this month.

The move comes as UBS has undertaken efforts in the past year to shrink its investment bank and shift focus away from riskier trading activities to its wealth management and retail operations. The bank cut 10,000 jobs last year as part of the overhaul.

Chris Murphy and George Athanasopoulos, both members of the investment bank’s executive committee, will head the combined operations, according to the memo, which was distributed at UBS on Nov. 19. UBS has confirmed the contents of the memo.

Chris Vogelgesang, co-head of global foreign exchange and precious metals trading, will step down and is exploring other opportunities at the bank, according to the memo. He will work closely with Messrs. Murphy and Athanasopoulos during the integration.

“The integration is not a change in strategy, rather a natural evolution of what we are trying to achieve,” the memo said.

Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-biggest after UBS, announced a similar move earlier this month combining its foreign exchange, rates and commodities businesses into a new division, according to an internal memo circulated Nov. 15. The bank also has cut positions in its fixed income business in recent months. Credit Suisse has confirmed the contents of the memo.

Swiss regulators have required Swiss banks to hold more capital and adopted tighter regulations designed to prevent a bank from being labeled “too big to fail” in the future. Swiss taxpayers injected billions of dollars into UBS during the crisis.

Both Credit Suisse and UBS have announced plans to “ring fence” parts of their businesses in hopes of shielding their retail clients and protecting each bank from the impact of problems in a single unit in the event of another financial crisis.

On Thursday, the two banks announced that they have formed a new business group called the Swiss Finance Council to help Swiss financial institutions shape policy issues as they are debated in the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. The new council, which will work with the Swiss Bankers Association, was formed ahead of the upcoming European parliamentary elections next year.

UBS and Credit Suisse are among more than a dozen banks that are facing inquiries by regulators in the United States, Europe and Hong Kong into the $5-trillion-a-day currency trading markets.

Twelve traders have been placed on leave at various banks pending the outcome of the investigation and several banks are considering limiting the use of chat rooms, which is an area of focus for regulators exploring potential collusion in the market. None of the traders has been formally accused of wrongdoing.

UBS and Credit Suisse are both internally reviewing their foreign exchange operations as a result of the investigations.

Earlier this week, UBS restricted the use of chat rooms by its traders, banning so-called multidealer chats where traders from several banks can congregate and social chat rooms, according to an internal memo. Single-client chats are allowed with written approval and all chats must be conducted on UBS’s internal systems, according to the memo.

The chat restriction is not related to the merging of the foreign exchange, rates and credit trading businesses.

Despite its size, the currency-trading market is largely unregulated and dominated by a handful of banks. Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS account for about half of all trading.