Member Info for Hosai

Normally this stock does less well in the afternoons but with news like this it's impossible to say.

If they do that and the price is low the market will be sceptical of buying if re-listed on US as the company might have a certain stigma if a believe was given out that they were happy to crash their own share price and screw shareholders by then buying it low...I think MM would be aware of this. Also a lot of low level employees have shares as part of schemes, he would be screwing them as-well?

Calamari in terms of taking 3-4 months to "complete" the rule says "they must make a cash offer to all other shareholders at the highest price paid in the 12 months before the offer was announced". Not 12 months before it is "completed".
So from what I can see if they did what you are saying they'd have to wait till May 10th to make an offer, also you can't assume they haven't already started the process in the weeks/months before considering betaviille have been putting out rumours for a while. PE might not want to wait 3 months to make an offer, what if the sp recovers by then? Also other institutions have bought post-May too.
I feel like more likely is PE buy for example THG beauty though, so perhaps the takeover rule is a moot point anyway.

Yes insider, but in that case where softbank aren't involved - they bought at 596p, want ingenuity and have a board member on THG. So it seems unlikely they would have turned on ingenuity that quick and suddenly accept an offer for £3 - half their buy price.
That's why I can't see a scenario where it could be less than say £5? Unless they did something very dubious/complex to get round it somehow.

Softbank buy was in May.

"When a person or group acquires interests in shares carrying 30% or more of the voting rights of a company, they must make a cash offer to all other shareholders at the highest price paid in the 12 months before the offer was announced (30% of the voting rights of a company is treated by the Code as the level at which effective control is obtained)."

https://www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk/the-code/download-code

by sp I meant takeover price

From what I understand the takeover rules mean the sp can't be lower than the highest amount any of the parties involved have paid for the shares in the last 12 months, which for softbank would be £5.96

I think it helps a lot that MM has gone quite big on ESG credentials the last few years (mostly ignored by the media). Will make them look all the more sweeter to a buyer.

Softbank won't accept it being "as low as possible", they bought at 596p.

Oliver Shah was away this week and someone else wrote in his place which saved Oliver having to write about this through gritted teeth.

Just a reminder what Fitch said about ingenuity:

"THG's in-house Ingenuity platform and owned infrastructure represent a high barrier to new entrants, only matched, if only partly, by Amazon.com, Inc. (A+/Positive)."

https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/thg-capital-raise-reinforces-positive-rating-momentum-14-05-2021

Not just that but people seem to be ignoring softbank who bought at 596p in May...softbank obviously are very keen on ingenuity, they still have a board member with THG installed in late Oct and RBC said a few weeks back they "didn't expect softbank to walk away".
Yet people here seem to think softbank will suddenly not be interested in ingenuity and will accept a £3 offer for their shares at half the price they bought at.

Just re-posting the article here, it's the true second paragraphs opens a little more vague, but the first paragraph is clear. I think people are being overly cautious to keep saying it could just as easily be a rumour:

Title on homepage - Private Equity on the prowl at THG
Title on article - Advent private equity circles Matt Moulding’s THG after share price slump

"Private equity firms Advent International and Leonard Green are exploring a buyout of the beleaguered online retailer The Hut Group.

Executives from Advent are said to have recently visited THG’s offices in Manchester, and Los Angeles-based Leonard Green is also understood to be running the rule over the company.

Shares in THG, led by co-founder Matt Moulding, jumped 16 per cent on Friday after news of the private equity interest surfaced in a speculative blog post on the Betaville website. Sources close to THG said Apollo, another firm linked with a deal, was a less likely buyer. Apollo is already one of THG’s debtholders, sources said.

THG’s shares have slumped 82 per cent over the past year amid growing concerns over its corporate governance, cashflows and the value of Ingenuity, the tech platform licensed by THG to other online retailers.

In an interview with GQ magazine last November, Moulding said his experience on the public markets had “just sucked from start to finish”. The chief executive added that he had “other options” because more than half of THG’s shares were owned by himself and his early backers.

A source close to Moulding said private equity firms had approached THG, rather than the other way around.

City sources said if private equity were to buy THG, they may seek to re-list it in the US, where investors are readier to tolerate minimal profits from fast-growing businesses."

People seem to be talking like "it might still be a rumour". The Sunday times literally wrote the first sentence of the piece as this: "Private equity firms Advent International and Leonard Green are exploring a buyout of the beleaguered online retailer The Hut Group."
There's no "rumour" it's a fact, the question is, are they going to come up with a deal or not and what deal?

Sounds good to me!

"Private equity firms Advent International and Leonard Green are exploring a buyout of the beleaguered online retailer The Hut Group.

Executives from Advent are said to have recently visited THG’s offices in Manchester, and Los Angeles-based Leonard Green is also understood to be running the rule over the company.

Shares in THG, led by co-founder Matt Moulding, jumped 16 per cent on Friday after news of the private equity interest surfaced in a speculative blog post on the Betaville website. Sources close to THG said Apollo, another firm linked with a deal, was a less likely buyer. Apollo is already one of THG’s debtholders, sources said.

THG’s shares have slumped 82 per cent over the past year amid growing concerns over its corporate governance, cashflows and the value of Ingenuity, the tech platform licensed by THG to other online retailers.

In an interview with GQ magazine last November, Moulding said his experience on the public markets had “just sucked from start to finish”. The chief executive added that he had “other options” because more than half of THG’s shares were owned by himself and his early backers.

A source close to Moulding said private equity firms had approached THG, rather than the other way around.

City sources said if private equity were to buy THG, they may seek to re-list it in the US, where investors are readier to tolerate minimal profits from fast-growing businesses."

The rumour was only published on betaville when the sp had already bounced to around 125p so unless others knew of the rumour beforehand then it bounced from 113 to 125p "on it's own" so to speak.

Is it that easy to get an £8.5 million personal loan? You think Steve would be saying "could you just lend me £8 million, you know I'm good for it.."

If you look at this guys previous uncooked alerts he does seem to have a habit of getting things out before the mainstream, of course he may have a selective bias of pointing out the times he was right before the mainstream and ignore times when nothing materializes.
This part does sound quite specific - "Insiders said executives from Advent recently visited THG's offices in Manchester.
The report, by City blog Betaville, also claimed that Apollo was visiting THG this week. Advisers at Jefferies are said to be working for THG on a deal with the private equity firms, who could be working as a consortium".

On the other hand if Apollo are only visiting this week it would indicate talks are not so advanced as to be at announcement stage. Unless it means Apollo visited in the week that just passed?

Whilst the rumour took the credit for the whole rise, the betaville article actually came out at 15:28, at which point the share price had already recovered from 113.60p up to around 125p - it started rising around 14:00.