Peppa Pig is a £4bn takeover target

. . . and its boss could trot away with £68 million

THE boss behind hit children’s TV show Peppa Pig will pocket up to £68m from his firm’s takeover by the world’s largest toymaker.

Darren Throop, chief executive of Entertainment One, will bag the windfall if its £4bn acquisition by US group Hasbro goes ahead.

The Play-Doh and My Little Pony owner swooped on the business this week with a 650p per share offer in the latest of what could be a wave of foreign deals following a fall in sterling.

Its approach sent E1 shares surging 32pc, or 141.6p, to 585p, and analysts even speculated there could be a bidding war involving the likes of Amazon and Netflix.

Entertainment One, which also distributes blockbuster films such as The Hunger Games, created a global phenomenon in 2011 with Peppa Pig.

If the deal wins the approval of shareholders, it will net Throop, 54, as much as £68m. He has around £40m shares in the business which he will get cash for, with a further £28m tied-up in long-term bonus plans. These bonus shares are likely to be released once the deal goes through.

In the same week, pub chain Greene King was snapped up by Hong Kong’s richest man Li KaShing for £2.7bn.

The pound’s falling value – down 6.5pc against the dollar to $1.22 over the past six months, due to fears over a No Deal Brexit – has attracted a raft of foreign investors looking to make a grab British listed firms at a bargain price. Graham Simpson, director at Canaccord Genuity, described the deal as ‘another quality great British asset getting scooped up by a US corporation benefiting from a trashed sterling’.

Hasbro’s all- cash offer represents a 31pc premium on Entertainment One’s share price over the past month. It is also three times higher than a £1bn rejected offer from ITV in 2016. Hasbro, which also makes the board game Monopoly and Transformers, is listed on Wall Street’s Nasdaq and is worth almost £12bn. Entertainment One was founded in 1973 in Ontario, Canada, as a music distributor.

Since listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2007, it has expanded into film and television and in recent years has moved further away from distribution and into producing its own content amid demand from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Its business, which also includes animated brands PJ Masks and Ricky Zoom, will be a boost for Hasbro at a time when it is reeling from the collapse of Toys R Us, one of its major partners.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: ‘It wouldn’t be surprising to see Amazon or Netflix want to throw their hat in the ring given how Entertainment One has such a big library of content which they need in order to keep customers loyal to their streaming platforms.

‘Perhaps more logical would be a counter-bid from Disney given it is part owner of the PJ Masks brand alongside Entertainment One.

‘The imminent launch of Disney’s new streaming service would be an ideal time to lock in a host of new characters like Peppa Pig.’