One week auction for KCOM underway
An auction process to decide the new owners of listed Hull telecom giant KCOM got underway last night.
The Takeover Panel announced on Thursday that an auction would begin at 5pm last night (Sunday 7 July) and end on Friday (July 12).
It comes after two offers to buy KCOM were received. A subsidiary of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) – Humber Bidco -put in a takeover bid worth £504m in April.
In June, this bid was topped by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets , trading as MEIF Fibre 6, for an aggregate value of £563m for KCOM.
But neither have made a final offer, so Britain’s takeover panel announced a week-long auction process.
The Takeover panel said: “On 24 April 2019, Humber announced a firm intention to make a recommended cash offer for the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of KCOM at
97 pence per share, to be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement.
“On 9 May 2019, Humber published a scheme document in connection with its offer.
“On 3 June 2019, MEIF 6 Fibre announced a firm intention to make a recommended cash offer for the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of KCOM at 108 pence per share, to be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement. On 18 June 2019, MEIF 6 Fibre published a scheme document in connection with its offer.
“On the basis that neither offeror has declared its offer final, such that either offer may be increased or otherwise revised, a competitive situation continues to exist for the purposes of Rule 32.5 of the Takeover Code (the “Code”).
“In order to provide an orderly framework for the resolution of this competitive situation, and in the absence of any alternative auction procedure having been agreed between the parties, the Panel Executive has, after discussions with the parties, ruled that the auction procedure set out in Appendix 8 of the Code shall be applied and that “Day 46” for these purposes shall be Sunday 7 July 2019.”
