IRN-BRU manufacturer AG Barr revealed yesterday that the Takeover Panel had agreed to extend the deadline for it to announce whether or not it intends to merge with Britvic until 5pm on October 31.
The drinks companies said they had sought an extension to the deadline, which had been 5pm yesterday, "to allow the boards of Britvic and AG Barr to consider further the various related aspects of the possible all-share merger".
In their joint statement to the stock market, they added: "Discussions are still ongoing and there can be no certainty that a firm offer will be made."
AG Barr, which is based in Cumbernauld, would say only that merger talks with Britvic were ongoing when it announced last week that its first-half profits had fallen 8% to £14.9 million, even though its sales growth beat the overall soft drinks market. Roger White, chief executive of AG Barr, declined to be drawn last week when asked by The Herald about analyst comments that the headquarters of a combined entity could be at his company's North Lanarkshire base.
The issue of headquarters location is an important one for corporate Scotland, given the scale of AG Barr and a backdrop of a contraction of the publicly quoted company base north of the Border in recent years.
AG Barr and Britvic said on September 5 they were in preliminary merger talks, and that Mr White would become chief executive of the enlarged company if a deal were to go ahead.
The companies said then that it had been agreed that Britvic shareholders would own 63%, and AG Barr investors 37%, of a merged entity, and disclosed the talks had resulted from an approach by the Scottish company to its Hertfordshire-based sector stablemate.
Shares in AG Barr fell 3.2p to 450.8p yesterday, giving it a stock market worth of about £526m. Britvic shares fell 1.4p to 365p, giving it a stock market capitalisation of about £885m.
Asked last week about employee morale, Mr White replied: "We have been through, as a business, lots of changes, consolidations, and acquisitions, and restructurings of the business in the last few years, and people are very positive and realistic about the business's desire to improve and grow."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article