LONDON (Alliance News) - DNO ASA on Thursday said that it increased its stake in Faroe Petroleum PLC to 30% and, as a result, its GBP567 million takeover offer for UK-listed oil and gas company is now mandatory offer pursuant to takeover rules.
The Norwegian oil firm has through market purchases acquired 372,890 Faroe shares for between 147 pence and 148p per Faroe share, which has increased DNO's holding to 30% in Faroe. Its cash offer is at a premium to this, at 152p a share.
DNO said its now mandatory offer has been further extended in accordance with takeover rules to January 18.
Earlier on Thursday, DNO had extended its "full, fair - and in retrospect, even generous - offer" by two weeks to January 16 and said that it is not going anywhere even if its hostile takeover bid fails.
Faroe currently has 372.89 million shares in issue, valuing the DNO offer at around GBP566.79 million. Shares in Faroe were trading 4.8% higher at 153.00p each on Thursday morning.
As Wednesday, DNO had received acceptances for its takeover offer from 13.1% shareholders. As it now owns 30% of Faroe itself, DNO has support for its offer from 43.1% of the issued share capital of Faroe, below the 57.5% plus one share required.
On Wednesday, Faroe published an independent valuation of its assets, which gave Faroe shares a value of 186p to 225p, saying this "further reinforces the board's view that DNO's offer is opportunistic and substantially undervalues Faroe".
