Reuters disputes M&A rankings for biz media

Joe Pompeo of Yahoo News reports that Reuters is disputing data from The Wall Street Journal that shows it breaks the most mergers and acquisitions stories in business news.

Pompeo writes, “The Cutline reached out to The New York Times, Bloomberg and Reuters to see if each cared to dispute The Journal staffer’s list and/or offer examples of big M&A scoops that were not included. The New York Times and Bloomberg declined to comment. But Reuters took issue.

“‘The list is a small subset of deals news and scoops,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘Even by this measure, though, Reuters has been ahead on a series of deals across sectors this year, and is a force to be reckoned with in this space.’

“As evidence, she provided a list of eight deals between $1 billion and $35.5 billion that she said Reuters ‘had the first and most crucial breaks on, often forcing competitors to cite Reuters stories in their own reporting.’

Compellent Technologies up for sale ($1bln); Bain had struck deal to buy Styron ($1.6bln deal); General Growth was to accept Brookfield-led deal, over Simon Property $30bln bid; Value of the $35.5bln AIA deal; Ivanhoe Mines (market cap $13bln) is likely to sell itself in a two-step process; Miner Drummond`s put its Colombian operations up for sale ($6-8bln); Fidelity National $15bln LBO collapsing; France’s Safran was near a deal to buy L-1 Identity ($1bln)

“As for The Journal, a spokeswoman, Ashley Huston,  said via email that the paper ‘broke the top four deals of the year’ — Metlife-AIG; Genzyme-Sanofil; Qwest-CenturyLink; and Smith Schlumberger.”

Read more here.