Friday will mark a double deadline for Arab-backed bids to buy Britain’s biggest online investment platform and a broadsheet newspaper where I used to work. Meanwhile, takeover decision day, to go formal or go away, has been extended for the Canadian potential buyers of one of my biggest investment trusts for tax-free income.

Elsewhere in the “forever fund”, shares in a Great British healthcare technology business have spiked 11 per cent higher since Swedish investors announced their stake. Oh, and last Monday a Danish brewer topped up its £3.3 billion knockout bid to buy the Hemel Hempstead-based soft drinks specialist, Britvic (stock market ticker: BVIC), putting some fizz back into Fever-Tree (FEVR), the London tonic-maker that served up the biggest cash profit I ever pocketed.

Phew! British funds and shares are going cheap and foreign buyers are snapping them up with both hands. What about you?

Abu Dhabi backing for an increased £5.4 billion bid to buy Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) has caused the investment platform’s share price to surge 54 per cent higher since the start of this year. Our outgoing Conservative government blocked a UAE bid to buy the Daily Telegraph but it would be ironic if an incoming Labour administration allowed free market forces to follow their own course.

As I no longer have any stake in either of these takeover targets I make no comment, other than to wish both businesses the best of luck continuing to provide services that many customers value. Closer to home, this small shareholder is delighted to report how the Hull-based artificial hip-maker, Smith & Nephew (SN), and the London-listed warehouse investment trust, Tritax Eurobox (EBOX), have attracted the attention of foreign bargain-hunters.

The Swedish investment firm Cevian Capital, which is backed by the billionaire corporate raider, Carl Icahn, revealed that it had built a 5 per cent stake in Smith & Nephew this month. Sad to say, the Yorkshire orthopaedics specialist has been hobbling along for years, suffering a rapid succession of chief executives. Some shareholders might welcome the chance to throw away our crutches and dance again.

Shares I bought for £7.99 in November 2013, aiming to gain from grey pounds grappling with the frailties of old age, peaked at £19.90 five years ago. Then Covid caused many folk to cancel non-urgent hospital operations and the shares slipped to £9 last year before Icahn’s intervention got them back on their feet and trading at £11 on Friday.

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Gravity remains an implacable foe for many wrinklies, so there might be further to go, said the old fool who broke his leg running in the snow not so long ago. Smith & Nephew enjoys a gross profit margin of 69 per cent but you can see this business has problems with a net margin below 5 per cent and a return on investment of less than 4 per cent, according to the independent statisticians Refinitiv. Even so, dividend income of 2.9 per cent, albeit advancing painfully slowly by an annual average of 1.85 per cent over the last five years, pays me to be patient.

Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management (BAM), which claims to have US $925 billion assets and is led by the former Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, came to the rescue of Tritax Eurobox. Higher risk-free interest rates available elsewhere had hurt these shares, pushing the price down to 45p last October before Brookfield expressed an interest, boosting them to 67p on Friday.

The original takeover code deadline to put up or shut up by July 1 was extended by mutual consent to the end of this month. Now Tritax claims that other bidders might be interested and I am happy to have popped these shares in my Isa, where we await events while pocketing 6.4 per cent tax-free income.

What about opportunities elsewhere? Shrewd observer Richard Hunter, the head of markets at the wealth manager Interactive Investor, told me: “The e-commerce logistics specialist Ocado (OCDO) is a ‘jam tomorrow’ stock with a 43 per cent share price decline over the last year. A prospective buyer with more sanguine views on growth prospects would hardly come as a surprise.”

Pooled funds — such as unit or investment trusts — offer a lower-risk way to gain exposure to takeover targets because they hold dozens of UK shares. Jason Hollands from the investment firm Bestinvest said: “Options to consider include the investment trusts Fidelity Special Values which is priced 7 per cent below its net asset value (NAV), mid and small-cap focused Mercantile, which is trading at a 10 per cent discount to NAV, and Henderson Smaller Companies on an 11 per cent discount.”

As mentioned earlier, Britain’s biggest investment platform is itself up for grabs. Darius McDermott, the managing director of rival firm Chelsea Financial Services, said: “The bid for Hargreaves Lansdown is a prime example of how the UK wealth management sector’s recurring revenues and strong client retention do not align with low stock market valuations. Hargreaves is a top ten holding within the unit trust Liontrust Special Situations.”

Bid speculation should never be the main reason for investing because most market chatter proves mistaken. But it is comforting when other investors come round to our view that a business is undervalued — after we own the shares. As always with the stock market, you have to be in it to win it.

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Power surge a welcome boost, but I can’t take credit

When I reminded readers last Sunday about the Sheffield-based green hydrogen business, ITM Power (ITM), I scarcely expected the share price to spike 17 per cent higher on Monday.

While it might be flattering to imagine the explosive equity performance of ITM is an example of the power of the press, the truth is more prosaic. This is a future-facing business that is beginning to raise revenues here and now.

ITM makes proton exchange machines that use renewable electricity from wind farms to split hydrogen out of water. It placed a rocket under its share price by agreeing to supply kit with the capacity to produce 500 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

To put that in perspective, its chief executive Dennis Schulz, who came from Linde, the world’s largest industrial gas company by market share and revenue, pointed out: “Following the capacity reservation for 100MW from Shell, this agreement with another large-scale industrial customer is a validation of our technology.”

Serious doubts remain about how cost-effective this process can be, with a great deal depending on electricity and hydrogen prices in future. However, the chancellor Rachel Reeves’s announcement last Wednesday that the new UK Infrastructure Bank aims to invest £7.3 billion in green energy, including hydrogen, might help ITM.

Either way, you can’t call me a short-term speculator. I first invested in this business at 41p per share in January 2010, when the Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg was still at primary school.

I took profits by selling some ITM at £5.39 in January 2021, and the shares traded at 65p on Friday. It just goes to show that, when it comes to investing in scientific innovation, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Full disclosure: Ian Cowie’s shareholdings