Painless, that is, except for Duke Street Capital and Associated Dental Practices who have been slugging it out for the dental practices chain and now private equity firm Duke St is back in control with an offer of 94p a share, valuing Oasis at £88m.
We had thought it unlikely that Duke St would top ADP’s 91p offer but you never know in a bid battle. One must give all credit to the Oasis board for refusing to even contemplate offers below 65p, which seemed quite a generous level only two months ago.
Duke St has had to raise its offer because it has paid 94p to the holder of a 10.7% stake in Oasis. The seller had already given an irrevocable undertaking to accept Duke St’s original offer of 82p.
It has gone on to buy more shares at that price early this morning from institutions who had agreed to take 82p.
Together with acceptances of 1.8% for its original proposal from shareholders who rushed to accept prematurely, Duke St is claiming it owns or has acceptances for 34% of Oasis.
The latest offer is exactly double the 47p that Oasis shares traded at immediately before it revealed that it had received bid approaches.
Duke St will now ask the Oasis board to switch its recommendation back from ADP. That should present no difficulty.
Meanwhile Oasis shareholders have no need to rush to do anything unless they need cash now, in which case they can sell in the market for rather more than they expected.