Takeover

[Pragmatist]

If certain people { not on here }were told in November that the takeover was very close to happening, why 3 months later is nobody any the wiser. Don’t say these things take time. Because 3months ago it was supposed to be very close.

3 months ago was when those involved had to sign NDAs. That’s why nobody is any the wiser!

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If certain people { not on here }were told in November that the takeover was very close to happening, why 3 months later is nobody any the wiser. Don’t say these things take time. Because 3months ago it was supposed to be very close.

There is a lot of property involved. That can take 2-3 months on its own to go through the process.

What process is that?  The properties aren’t being sold.  They remain within the relevant companies.  This is purely a share transaction.

As with any corporate transaction, the deal process can be lengthy. Even after a potential buyer has been sought and agreed a deal in principle, that buyer will undertake due diligence (financial, tax, legal, etc). Once due diligence has concluded (something which normally takes at least four weeks), there’s then further negotiations between buyer and seller to agree the final deal. A share purchase agreement is then signed and after all that, the deal can be concluded (subject to regulatory approval if necessary).

John Percy reported on 12th January that Shilen Patel would be granted a period of exclusivity. In a previous post, I mentioned how timings will be very dependent upon when that exclusivity was granted (and indeed whether we had undertaken our own ‘vendor’ due diligence in advance). If exclusivity was granted in the week that Percy reported the news, then I wouldn’t be expecting due diligence to conclude until the end of this week at the earliest. If that was the case, mid-late February for some kind of announcement would be possible, but that is working to a fairly accelerated timeline assuming no delays from either side (a big assumption given our current owner).

I agree with all of that.

My point was that I couldn’t see anything directly related to the property within the group which would be holding anything up

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If certain people { not on here }were told in November that the takeover was very close to happening, why 3 months later is nobody any the wiser. Don’t say these things take time. Because 3months ago it was supposed to be very close.

3 months ago was when those involved had to sign NDAs. That’s why nobody is any the wiser!

---

If certain people { not on here }were told in November that the takeover was very close to happening, why 3 months later is nobody any the wiser. Don’t say these things take time. Because 3months ago it was supposed to be very close.

There is a lot of property involved. That can take 2-3 months on its own to go through the process.

What process is that?  The properties aren’t being sold.  They remain within the relevant companies.  This is purely a share transaction.

They will still do due diligence on the property. If the deal is leveraged there will be a need for legal charges and local searches. That's 2-3  months

There’s no hint that it’s a leveraged deal, and even it was, a legal charge and searches would take weeks, not 2-3 months!  The amount of property due diligence is not extensive.