Nestlé can turn a deaf ear to Dan Loeb’s ideas – except one. While most of the demands the Third Point activist put to the Swiss giant’s board last month wouldn’t obviously juice up the share price, Loeb’s call for old-fashioned margin improvement holds more promise. Loeb thinks Nestlé’s shares ought to be higher than the current level of around 84 Swiss francs. One option, he contends, would be for the company run by Ulf Mark Schneider to increase its net debt to two times EBITDA, adding 21 billion Swiss francs ($22 billion) for share buybacks. While shareholders might like

Jack Ma may be giving a rival bidder a smarter way to win an M&A fight. The Alibaba chief executive’s payments division, Ant Financial, has sweetened its offer to buy MoneyGram to $1.2 billion. That’s 20 percent higher than what interloper Euronet proffered. Cost cuts alone cannot justify it making a new counteroffer. Given Anbang’s struggles to close its deal with Fidelity & Guaranty Life, Euronet is better off waiting to see if regulators clear the way. Ant’s new terms represent a 64 percent premium to MoneyGram’s share price before talks started and value the company at 18 times this