Finaccess crosses cap for Restaurant Brands takeover

AUCKLAND: Finaccess Capital will scale its $9.45 a share offer for Restaurant Brands New Zealand after acceptances exceeded its 75% upper limit.

The Mexican investor declared the partial takeover bid unconditional earlier this week after getting the regulatory and franchisor approvals it needed and securing more than 50% of the fastfood operator’s shares.

Under the Takeovers Code, that let Finaccess keep the offer open for another 10 working days and it has now attracted almost 86% support, up from 73% on March 13.

Restaurant Brands shareholders did not take up the offer until late in the piece. Fortyone percent were formally behind it at the end of last week and only 28% the week before that.

The shares closed at a record $9 on Wednesday and last traded at that price yesterday.

The Finaccess offer values Res taurant Brands at $1.18 billion and was a 24% premium to the $7.60 share price the company was trading at before the bid emerged.

Director Stephen Copulos agreed to sell his 8.6% stake at the start and the independent directors threw their backing behind it after the independent adviser valued Restaurant Brands at $1.02 billion$1.11 billion.

Chief executive Russell Creedy and chief financial officer Grant Ellis also elected to sell into the offer.

The Mexican firm has said it will keep Restaurant Brands’ dividend policy unchanged in the near term and promised not to delist the company in the following 12 months unless it mounted a full takeover.

If it does seek to mop up the remaining shares, it has promised not to offer a lower price, subject to wider movements on the benchmark S&P/NZX 50 Index. — BusinessDesk