Deadline extended for AG Barr and Britvic boards to consider merger bid
IRN-BRUmanufacturer AGBarr revealed yesterday that the Takeover Panel had agreed to extend the deadline for it to announce whether or not it intends to merge with Britvic until 5pm on October 31.
The drinks companies said they had sought an extension to the deadline, which had been 5pm yesterday, “to allow the boards of Britvic and AG Barr to consider further the various related aspects of the possible all-share merger”.
In their joint statement to the stock market, they added: “Discussions are still ongoing and there can be no certainty that a firm offer will be made.”
AG Barr, which is based in Cumbernauld, would say only that merger talks with Britvic were ongoing whenit announced last week that its first-half profits had fallen 8% to £14.9 million, even though its sales growth beat the overall soft drinks market. Roger White, chief executive of AG Barr, declined to be drawn last week when asked by The Herald about analyst comments that the headquarters of a combined entity could be at his company’s North Lanarkshire base.
The issue of headquarters location is an important one for corporate Scotland, given the scale of AG Barr and a backdrop of a contraction of the publicly quoted company base north of the Border in recent years.
AG Barr and Britvic said on September 5 they were in preliminary merger talks, and that Mr White would become chief executive of the enlarged company if a deal were to go ahead.
The companies said then that it had been agreed that Britvic shareholders would own 63%, and AG Barr investors 37%, of a merged entity, and disclosed the talks had resulted from an approach by the Scottish company to its Hertfordshirebased sector stablemate.
Shares in AG Barr fell 3.2p to 450.8p yesterday, giving it a stock market worth of about £526m. Britvic shares fell 1.4p to 365p, giving it a stock market capitalisation of about £885m.
Asked last week about employee morale, Mr White replied: “We have been through, as a business, lots of changes, consolidations, and acquisitions, and restructurings of the business in the last few years, and people are very positive and realistic about the business’s desire to improve and grow.”