VERY interesting....24 Apr 2023 22:48
If anyone has a spare ten minutes, have a look what Agarwal did with Vedanta in 2018. At that time he was a majority shareholder (just over 50%), and his associates owned another 15%.
In 2018 he made an offer of 825p to take the company private (around a 14% premium to the trailing 3 month average). At the time, this was met with disdain by shareholders who thought the true value of the company was much more. Plenty of forums and message boards at the time reported that if the buyout wasn't approved at the EGM, Agarwal would just delist the company instead.
That sale went through, and here we are 5 years later in a VERY similar situation.
Except it looks like Agarwal has been a bit more intelligent - by threatening a delisting (which would happen anyway if he wanted a takeover), he would have been fully aware of the impact on the SP due to II's being unable to hold, and PI's panic selling.
Agarwal could now, at any point, make a cash offer to share sweep to take 100% control.
And then what - well... I'm not sure what the market rules are, but I would assume he would need majority of the remaining 18% shareholders to approve. So he comes out and offers 100p ... Who isn't going to accept that when the alternative is far, far more uncertain.
Also, Agarwal has been very vocal in the past about his dislike for the London markets due to undervaluing companies in comparison to stocks in other countries. Maybe he's now using this to his advantage?
I don't think this story has even started yet.