Decision time looms for puzzled Saatch investors

YOU have to feel for M&C Saatchi shareholders.

They have two takeover offers to choose between – or stick with the advertising group and its buoyant performance. Expansion plans are going perfectly well without the need for another party to get involved, a trading update seemed to imply last week. The bids come from UK ‘Tech Queen’ Vin Murria, a serial entrepreneur whom M&C has rejected from the start, and Next Fifteen Communications.

The trouble is both offers include shares and cash.

So, whether one deal is better than the other has swung back and forth with the share price.

Next Fifteen may now have pulled ahead, as its offer has risen to more than 200p a share. This could be enough to swing some shareholders. An insider told Stocks To Watch a few weeks ago a 200p bid would be the threshold.

With deadlines approaching in the coming weeks, and competing offers battling it out, many investors will still be scratching their heads.

THERE’S scepticism in the City over Hargreaves Lansdown ahead of its fullyear results next Friday.

The trading hub for individual investors has attracted a record amount of shorts from hedge funds which will make money if its share price falls. Six groups have built up the 3.84 per cent position, including the UK’s biggest short-selling fund, Marshall Wace.

Hargreaves has suffered the same fate as most socalled ‘pandemic winners’, whose huge growth during Covid has since fizzled. Analysts expect profits to fall to £275million from £366million last year.

The outlook will be key. Will ordinary Britons be less likely to dabble this autumn as higher bills hit households and pots of spare cash shrink?