CanniMed raises worries over Aurora takeover offer

The takeover battle between two Canadian medical marijuana producers is turning more acrimonious as CanniMed Therapeutics Inc. is raising new concerns that securities laws may have been violated by Aurora Cannabis Inc.’s offer.

CanniMed has asked regulators in Saskatchewan and Ontario to weigh in on several complaints, including that Aurora’s hostile takeover bid be considered an “insider bid,” the company said Monday in a statement. The first company was involved in a long due diligence process to acquire Newstrike Resources Ltd. at the time of Aurora’s offer and lawyers need to take a “deeper dive” to determine if there was any breach of securities laws, said CanniMed chief executive officer Brent Zettl.

“We had two directors on our board who were essentially shopping the company around as joint actors with Aurora and coming in at nearly the last minute to make an informal offer for the company,” Zettl said in a telephone interview from Toronto, without naming the directors. “It just speaks to serious questions about confidentiality and all kinds of breaches.”

On Nov. 14, Aurora made an unsolicited $582 million offer to acquire CanniMed in what would be the largest takeover in the country’s rapidly growing pot market.

CanniMed closed at $19.87, down 0.3 per cent in Monday trading, below the offer price of $24 a share.

Shareholders representing 38 per cent of issued CanniMed shares had concerns about the way the company was being managed and approached Aurora about a deal, said Cam Battley, Aurora’s executive vice-president. Aurora wasn’t hunting for a Canadian acquisition at the time, he said.

“They’re cobbling together whatever they can, and thus far, it isn’t working,” Battley said by phone. “All of this will be dealt with in court.”

CanniMed applied for orders against Aurora with the Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan and the Ontario Securities Commission.