Schneider stock slides on rumors of Tyco acquisition

There’s been plenty of chatter over the past two weeks about Schneider Electric’s alleged interest in purchasing Tyco International in a deal that would be in the neighborhood of $30 billion and rank as the largest industrial acquisition ever by a European company. Bloomberg has been the primary source for the rumors, and the market’s response hit the value of Schneider shares hard. The Bloomberg report said, “Schneider shareholders lost $1.7 billion on the day the company’s preliminary discussions with Tyco became known. The stock continued its descent the following day, until Schneider intervened on April 13 with a statement that the company, based near Paris, is ‘not currently’ in takeover talks with Tyco.” Tyco’s largest operation is its ADT security unit. It split off the connector business familiar to the electrical industry (formerly AMP) in a separate company, now called TE Connectivity, in 2007 following an accounting scandal.