JOHN Bairstow's Queens Moat Houses is home and dry in its #165m battle
for control of the Norfolk Capital Group -- although by the narrowest of
margins.
Acceptances received by lunchtime yesterday totalled 178 million
shares or 42.95%. Together with shares purchased earlier, Queens Moat
now has 52.9% and has declared the offer unconditional.
Throughout, Mr Bairstow had been playing a shrewd game even if the
offer price was very tight. Without doubt, he has won a considerable
bargain as the all paper offer price was worth about 38p yesterday
compared with Norfolk's net assets of 53p.
Throughout, the board rows at Norfolk had left its defence largely in
tatters even when it first appeared with two former directors, Lady
Joseph and Anthony Good, both highly critical of its management and
recommending the Queens Moat offer.
The agreement by Peter Tyrie's Balmoral International to give its 13%
conditional support to Queens Moat was the crucial factor in swinging
the battle.
Balmoral initially tried to generate shareholder support for a
boardroom coup but when that was defeated, he tried to buy the
Caledonian and Royal British Hotels in Edinburgh from Norfolk.
Mr Bairstow made it clear earlier this month when he declared his bid
final that he would not be prepared to sell these two assets.
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