Rothermere bows to investor pressure, lifts bid for DMGT

(Sharecast News) - The Rothermere family on Thursday bowed to investor pressure and increased the cash element of its buyout bid for the company that publishes the right-wing Daily Mail newspaper.
Minority shareholders have been given a final take-it-or-leave it offer of 270p a share, an increase of 5.9% from the original offer for their Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) stock. The threshold for acceptances was also lowered to 50%.

Family head Jonathan Harmsworth last month came under pressure to increase his £850m bid to take the company private as investors called his offer "opportunistic".

Majedie Asset Management, which has a 4.6% stake in DMGT, said the proposed offer by the Rothermere family was "substantially below" fair value.

Harmsworth, who is DMGT chairman and controlling shareholder with 36%, had already increased his offer once to 255p in cash plus debt for each DMGT share.

Harmsworth's attempt to take DMGT's consumer business private is part of a complex deal with a series of pre-conditions, which have now been cleared.

It involved selling the insurance risk business RMS, securing the New York listing of online used car seller Cazoo so it could distribute its 17% stake to shareholders and pumping £412m into the firm's three pensions funds.

A special payment of 991p per share and a final dividend of 17.3p per share remain unchanged under the new deal.

Minority shareholders have until December 16 to decide whether to accept the offer.