* Bidders have until Feb. 20 to make revised offers
* Day 1 of auction slated for Feb. 22
* Shares in G4S up 1%
(Adds context on auction process, background)
By Yadarisa Shabong
Feb 12 (Reuters) - The $5 billion-plus bid battle for
British security firm G4S will be settled by a rare
head-to-head auction later this month if one of its two North
American suitors hasn't prevailed by then, Britain's takeover
regulator said on Friday.
The Takeover Panel's decision comes after Canada's
GardaWorld and U.S.-based Allied Universal have both extended
deadlines for their offers several times.
The panel said the bidders would have until Feb. 20 to make
revised bids for G4S, and if the situation hadn't been settled
by then, the process would head to an auction.
G4S, which employs more than 500,000 people around the
world, in December backed a 3.8 billion pound ($5.2 billion) bid
from Allied Universal, after repeatedly rejecting offers from
GardaWorld.
Allied's latest offer of 245 pence per G4S share is 10 pence
higher than GardaWorld's last bid.
Both GardaWorld and Allied Universal are trying to buy a
larger business which has had to restructure over the past few
years following a series of setbacks. Last year, G4S sold its
cash handling unit, barring a few operations including the one
in the UK, to U.S. peer Brinks Co.
G4S shares, which have soared more than 80% since
private-equity backed GardaWorld first made its offer public on
Sept. 14, were last up 1%. They hit a more than two-year high of
269 pence earlier on Friday.
The decision to instigate an auction is rare, with only a
handful of bidding wars taking that route in the past. In 2018,
Comcast beat Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox
in an auction for pay-television group Sky.
The panel said on Friday that G4S, GardaWorld and Allied
Universal had all agreed to the terms of the auction procedure.
The procedure provides for up to five days of public bidding
over sequential business days, with Feb. 22 set as the first day
of the auction.
($1 = 0.7254 pounds)
(Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru. Editing by
Shinjini Ganguli and Mark Potter)
