QANTAS being taken over by Macquarie Bank..

[Tooner]

Trading has been halted till 11am.

... and so it should be!

 

[PaulZ]

100th Post!!


Now qantas has requested a trading halt until Wedensday or on an announcement being made before then.

Announcement Jackson is resigning?
Annoucnement that APA are renewing their $5.45 Bid?
Announcement that APA are lanching a new takeover bid with higher offer price?

Time will tell.

 

[Kendall Roy]

100th Post!!


Now qantas has requested a trading halt until Wedensday or on an announcement being made before then.

Announcement Jackson is resigning?
Annoucnement that APA are renewing their $5.45 Bid?
Announcement that APA are lanching a new takeover bid with higher offer price?

Time will tell.

Hopefully
YES
NO
NO

 

[JohnK]

APA have lost fair and square. I wish they will just go away....

 

[simongr]

This isnt the grand final John - they are perfectly within their rights to come at this as often as they want. It's their money that they are burning at the moment. They will have invested a lot of money in this bid already. They obviously (?) didnt expect the market generally to appreciate by so much in such a short space of time thus devaluing their bid. Their finance team will now be assessing if an increased bid can be made - one wonders where the current "cash" for the investment is itslf invested - will that have appreciated by as much over the same time...

Eevery deal has some flexibility in it for both the buyer and seller - I would be surprised if APA didnt have something else up its sleeve.

 

[serfty]

APA have lost fair and square. I wish they will just go away....

Won't happen, not when APA were looking at making at least 4,000,000,000 Oz Dollars in less than a year with the offer price of $5.60 (inc dividend).

 

[PaulZ]

Qantas has disclosed the reason for its suspension:

"The Australian Securities & Investments Commission this morning queried the suggestion in the Takeovers Panel Media Release dated 7 May 2007 that as a result of clause 7.3(f)(i) of the terms of the APA offer, APA may have met the 50% threshold prior to the close of the APA offer, and thus the APA offer may have been extended by operation of s.624(2) of the Corporations Act."

In the original offer documentation, there was a clause:

"7.3(f)(i) including where this Offer is caused to be accepted in accordance​

with the ASTC Settlement Rules:
(i) irrevocably accepted this Offer in respect of all your Qantas Shares despite any difference between that number and the number of Qantas Shares shown on the Acceptance Form;"​

What this all means is that if a shareholder had purported to accept even only 1 share of their holding prior to the close of the offer on Friday at 7pm, then APA can actually count all of their shares in that holding as having accepted the offer.​

This possibility was actually mentioned in the Takeover Panel's first determination on the matter.​

APA could have crossed the 50% line in time afterall. (and thus an extension of 2 weeks will occur and will still hopefully fail [by not reaching 70%])

Qantas has said their shares will resume trading tomorrow. ​

 

[simongr]

Although seems a little tricksy it is reasonable - it would be a bit bloody stupid if you as a shareholder said "I accept your offer to buy the whole company and delist with some of my shares but not otehrs". The offer was not to buy up some QF shares but to acquire control of QF.

Looks like someone at Mallesons has been up all weekend re-reading the offer documents

 

[QF WP]

There are some interesting Company Announcements about QAN today on the ASX website that have lead to the trading halt.

 

[JohnK]

Won't happen, not when APA were looking at making at least 4,000,000,000 Oz Dollars in less than a year with the offer price of $5.60 (inc dividend).

Yes you are right. Why would they go away and miss out on the opportunity to steal A$4 billion, legally? And I use the term legally very loosely.

I wish they would just go away and crawl back under that rock.... YMMV!

 

[turtlemichael]

- it would be a bit bloody stupid if you as a shareholder said "I accept your offer to buy the whole company and delist with some of my shares but not otehrs". The offer was not to buy up some QF shares but to acquire control of QF.

Looks like someone at Mallesons has been up all weekend re-reading the offer documents

Why would that be stupid? It seems reasonable to me to want to tie in a profit but still remain a shareholder for either the second stage from 50% to 70% to play the market or even long term, after the successful completion of the takeover, as a minority shareholder. After all it's the former that the late Mr Haymen wanted to do when he offered some of his shares after the 7.00pm deadline.

In any case it will come down to what the words of the offer mean and whether sufficient did hold back. Whatever the outcome I think "the system" has been severely damaged by these shenanigans. I suspect the fat lady is still warbling her practice scales in the Green Room waiting to come out on stage.

 

[mabunji]

Seems like Costello is trying to bring the thing to a conclusion. If APA have to wait a couple of months the bid loses its momentum, and in 3 months no politician is going to be sympathetic to the bid that close to an election.

….. it could be months before the consortium could get its hands on Qantas. Due to takeover laws, analysts estimate it could take three months before APA could lodge a new offer.

Airline Partners Australia has also been warned it will not have an easy ride should it renew its failed $11.1 billion bid for Qantas.

Mr Costello said today that any new bid by APA would have to go through the entire regulatory process again, including requiring fresh consideration under Australia's foreign investment rules.

"The bid that was put forward by Airline Partners Australia lapsed when the time limit expired last Friday night,'' Mr Costello said.

"If anyone wants to lodge a new bid the whole thing starts again, everything starts again.''

"If a new bid is lodged then that will of course have to be dealt with through the Foreign Investment Review Board.''

(Taken from the SMH website).

 

[simongr]

I would think the FIRB approval would be pretty quick in coming - given they just approved the same bid.

Interesting that APA could buy Qantas for $11bn and today's telegraph is suggesting that Mr Howard is going to buy australia for about $15bn

 

[Altair]

APA is proposing to lodge a new bid at the amount of $5.45, but it may take several months according to the SMH.
I doubt that this would be successful as well as it will take several months for payment of acceptances and hedge funds would want a better return on their money to cover the costs of holding QAN shares for so long. I believe a new offer will include an increase in price or maybe will involve some of the larger institutions as part of the new consortium, meaning they will keep a share holding QAN rather than finding a place to put their money in.
What this means is either a higher leveraged QF or more agressive cost cutting to get the acceptable return.
Oh well I never thought the share price would plumet as the P/E ratio is still lower than the rest of the market.

 

[codash1099]

Interesting that APA could buy Qantas for $11bn and today's telegraph is suggesting that Mr Howard is going to buy australia for about $15bn

That's probably fair value.

 

[Dave Noble]

Qantas bid may have succeeded: APA

Latest news

The botched $11.1 billion grab for Qantas may have succeeded after all claim the private equity bidders in their latest attempt to keep the deal alive.

The basis of the claim is an interpretation by the bidder, Airline Partners Australia (APA), of the acceptance clause in its offer statement.

According to APA, under the terms of acceptance, shareholders who accepted the takeover offer must surrender their entire stake in the airline to APA - not part of the stake, as many large shareholders have done.

Under such an interpretation, acceptances for the offer would have exceeded 50 per cent by 7pm Friday, meaning the offer would have extended for another two weeks.

Full article at Qantas bid may have succeeded: APA - Business - Business - smh.com.au

Dave

 

[serfty]

I reckon APA's legal Eagles have been pouring over the contractual fine print looking for ANYTHING. I guess they are sort of 'clutching at straws'.

This may be only the first such 'straw' that may surface.

As a counterpoint to this particular issue, it might be argued that a single acceptance that did not surrender a shareholder's entire stake in the airline to APA would actually be "invalid" meaning that NONE of those shares could be considered to have been "accepted" at any stage.

 

[tuapekastar]

If APA decide to have another crack, I would imagine they also need to persuade their financial backers to come along for the ride again. Given the cough-up this time, and the potential for variances in a new bid, they (the backers) may not be as keen again.

 

[codash1099]

If APA decide to have another crack, I would imagine they also need to persuade their financial backers to come along for the ride again. Given the cough-up this time, and the potential for variances in a new bid, they (the backers) may not be as keen again.

They may not agree to both a 70% acceptance level AND a higher bid price. And it's hard to see how a $5.45 price would be any more attractive to shareholders than it was first time around.

 

[Takeshi]

Are these clowns for real ? That clown Beppo alias Bob mansfield said last week he was very worried that Hedge funds would only sell part of their stock, enough to get them over 50%.
So now this cough about clause 7.3 dash8.56.98clause578 ect ect.

This would have been so obvious to everyone, except maybe the poor mum & dad shareholders who didn't read the 3 million page bidders statement.
I am sure the big funds would have known such an important clause ???

APA are really losing faith by all concerned, That silly Qantas boss should tell APA to go away and don't come back, you are now severely damaging the Airline, or is it maybe too late.