ZIM's Sept 9 cliff-edge turned into a 30-day negotiation with real concessions on the table, not the up-or-down decision everyone was watching for. A Paramount-commissioned economic report became public leverage in the fight to settle WBD's last remaining obstacle. Two new deals join the tracker. And Iridium's real deal value has been quietly running below the $54.00 headline for a while now, as RKLB continues trading under the collar's floor — not a new development, but one worth understanding properly.
69
Active Deals
1.83%
Median Spread
~$664B
Total Value
This Week’s Top Moves
$IRDM10.3%
The collar's been broken a while. We caught up our own math.
Iridium's headline $54.00/share has always been $27.00 cash plus a collared RKLB stock leg — fixed at 0.4000 shares below a $67.50 floor, floating to protect exactly $27.00 in value between $67.50 and $112.50, and fixed at 0.2400 shares above $112.50. RKLB has been trading in the low-$60s for some time now, genuinely below the floor and lower than the brief July breach we'd flagged before — this isn't new this week, but our own tracked figures hadn't caught up to it. Below the floor, the stock leg is not protected — it moves directly with RKLB's price. At ~$62.95, the stock leg is worth roughly $25.18, not $27.00, putting real total deal value closer to $52.18 than the $54.00 nominal figure. We've corrected our tracked offer price to reflect this actual math rather than the flat headline number. Worth internalizing for any collared stock-and-cash deal: the moment a collar breaks, "spread vs. headline" stops being the right question.
Israel's Government Companies Authority didn't issue the expected up-or-down decision on the 9th — instead, it told Hapag-Lloyd and FIMI to rewrite the deal structure, with a revised proposal due by end of September. The concrete terms on the table are real: the golden-share foreign-ownership trigger drops from 24% to 10%, the new "ZIM Israel" entity would list only on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, operate debt-free with 16 vessels, and get expanded Asia route access. Confirmed by Calcalist and Hapag-Lloyd itself. This is a genuine de-escalation of near-term binary risk — but not a resolution. The revised proposal still has to go to Israel's cabinet and win over ministries that were prepared to reject the original terms, and a golden-share refusal here is a real condition risk to the deal, not a clean, cheaply-terminated outcome.
A study commissioned by Paramount Skydance itself, dated Sept 10 and leaked to Politico, quantifies the cost to California if Paramount relocates its HQ out of state: 2,750-5,550 job-years and $1-2B in lost output for a partial pullback through 2031, or 28,990-57,980 permanent jobs and $10.6-21.2B annually if Paramount fully leaves. The framing matters — this isn't independent government analysis, it's Paramount's own commissioned numbers, surfacing right as CA AG Bonta and the state AG coalition head toward settlement talks, and right before Paramount's own $7M/day ticking fee to WBD shareholders begins accruing October 1 if the deal hasn't closed. Regulatory risk here is fully resolved (68/68 jurisdictions cleared); this is purely about how the litigation settles, and the cost of not settling is now being made very publicly clear.
Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern's procedural schedule is now concrete: Feb 16, 2027 for responses and rebuttal, May 28, 2027 for final briefs — a real refinement of the vaguer "H2 2027" framing we'd been using. On Aug 26, UP/NS filed a response urging the STB to reject the shipper/competing-railroad/state-AG coalition's prima facie summary-denial motion — the STB itself hasn't ruled on it yet. CEO Jim Vena reaffirmed a Q3/Q4 2027 close target at a Sept 2 investor event. Nothing here changes the fundamental picture — long duration, real opposition, a genuinely contested case — but the timeline is now a lot more concrete than it was two weeks ago.
Correction to how we'd been framing this: Aquarian missed its original deadline to close the $4.1B deal, and Bloomberg reported Delaware's insurance regulator questioned Aquarian founder Rudy Sahay directly, in a closed-door meeting, about the firm's sources of capital and its plans for Brighthouse's balance sheet. Aquarian says Mubadala Capital's $3B is a committed backstop regardless of whether new investors join, and that it's still working to disclose additional backers as agreements finalize. BHF shares have fallen to roughly $51, well below the $70 deal price — a real signal of market doubt, not noise. The spread's new high has an actual story behind it this time.
$ACVA — ACV Auctions → Copart — $10.50 cash (~$1.9B, 45% premium, no financing condition) — year-end 2026 $EFSI — Eagle Financial Services → John Marshall Bancorp — 2.0x stock ratio (~$46.72 implied, ~$253M) — est. Q1 2027 Both confirmed via the companies' own SEC filings. EFSI is a fixed exchange ratio, not a fixed-dollar offer — realized value floats with John Marshall's own stock price.
Sept 24 — $IRDM shareholder vote. Director support agreements already in place.
Sept 30 — $CCO and $IMXI close-adjacent dates.
Oct 1 — $WBD ticking fee begins accruing ($7M/day) if unclosed. Paramount is treating this as its own settlement deadline with the state AG coalition, not a contractual one.
Oct 5 — $BLFS shareholder vote.
Late Sept (est.) — $ZIM revised proposal expected before Israel's cabinet.
Top 6 by Spread — September 13, 2026
Ticker
Deal
Spread
Key Risk
$BHF
Aquarian / Brighthouse
39.7%
Burdensome Condition clause names BRCD directly; Aquarian missed original close deadline
$ZIM
Hapag-Lloyd / ZIM
18.4%
Revised proposal still needs cabinet-level approval
$NSC
Union Pacific / Norfolk Southern
16.5%
STB review now dated through May 2027 briefs
$IMXI
Western Union / Intermex
13.5%
DFPI reinstatement still pending; Nov 10 hard date
$UNF
Cintas / UniFirst
13.1%
FTC Second Request still open
$WBD
Paramount Skydance / WBD
10.6%
Litigation settlement is the entire remaining story
Top 6 by Risk-Adjusted Expected Return
#
Ticker
Why
Gross Spread
Annualized
#1
$CCO
Cleanest deal-specific risk profile tracked — vote and HSR done, CFIUS the only remaining gate.
2.1%
~48%
#2
$PERF
81.2% of voting power locked into support agreements, fully self-funded.
3.6%
~12%
#3
$WBD
Regulatory risk fully resolved; litigation settlement is the one remaining variable.
10.6%
~21%
#4
$IMXI
Highest raw annualized return in the group (short modeled duration); DFPI caveat unresolved but not worsening.
13.5%
~307%
#5
$BHF
Second-highest annualized (short modeled duration); new high, and this time with a real story behind it (missed deadline, regulator questioning capital sources).
39.7%
~175%
#6
$IRDM
Collar breach cuts real value below headline — spread now measured against the corrected ~$52.18 figure, not $54.00 nominal.
10.3%
~13%
Annualized figures use ArbLens's modeled expected close, not a deal's outside date or next catalyst, and aren't probability-weighted. $IRDM's figures this week reflect the corrected, collar-adjusted deal value rather than the $54.00 headline.
What changed this week:$IRDM's spread and annualized return both dropped not because anything got riskier, but because the actual math changed — the collar breach means less real value is on the table than the headline suggested. This is a good example of why "spread vs. headline offer" can understate real risk in any collared deal once the stock leg moves out of its protected band.
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For informational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes investment advice. Merger arbitrage involves significant risk including deal failure and loss of capital. Data sourced from public filings and third-party sources. Spreads shown are as of September 13, 2026 and update nightly on arblens.com.