It’s goodbye, Boral (ASX:BLD), as the company’s briefly rebellious independent directors accept a remade offer from Seven Group Holdings, the largest shareholder. Boral’s independent directors had rejected the complex Seven Group (ASX:SVW) offer, holding out for more money and using an independent expert’s report to justify their stance.
On Friday, their resistance worked, and the Stokes-controlled company came up with a few tweaks to put more money on the table. In fact, the deal was brokered in talks between Seven Group and Boral, which saw both companies give a bonus to shareholders.
Boral will pay a fully franked dividend of 26¢ a share on April 26, while Seven has announced it will pay a special one-off dividend of 30¢ a share once the offer closes, providing extra incentive for Boral shareholders to accept the cash-and-scrip offer.
As well, there are a couple of smaller changes – after agreement with the independent directors, SGH said “the Maximum Consideration in its offer of 0.1116 SGH Shares and $1.70 cash will now be paid to all Boral shareholders who accept the Offer (including those who have already done so).” And Seven said that in calculating the scrip consideration to be issued to Boral Shareholders, “SGH has agreed to round to the nearest whole number of SGH shares (either up or down), subject to customary protections against splitting shareholdings.”
Seven Group said on Friday that it now had control of 78.79% of Boral. As AFL commentators scream at the end of a game – ‘It’s all over, Red Rover’ – and Seven Group will now wrap up the outstanding shares in Boral.