Cobham goes hostile with Thrane and Thrane bid

Cobham, which specialises in meeting the demand for data, connectivity and bandwidth in defence, security and commercial environments, is to have another crack at Danish satellite communications outfit Thrane and Thrane.

The UK group is offering 420 Danish kroner for each share of Thrane & Thrane, the same price rejected by the Danish company's board back in March after a year or so of negotiations. However, things have moved on since then with Cobham increasing its stake in Thrane & Thrane after Jupiter Asset Management and other institutional investors representing 22.74% of the Danish company's issued share capital decided that they would be happy to take Cobham's cash at that price.

As a result of buying the stakes from institutional investors Cobham has raised its holding in Thrane & Thrane to 25.59%.

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"Cobham continues to seek to work with the board of Thrane & Thrane to achieve a recommendation for this offer and to facilitate the bringing together of Thrane & Thrane and Cobham's SATCOM [satellite communications] business in a way that provides the best future for the business, its employees and customers," a statement from Cobham said.

Any negotiations between the top brass at the British and Danish firms this time round will not include Waldemar Schmidt, who resigned as Chairman of Thrane & Thrane on March 26th, after disagreements with his fellow directors over the future direction of the business.

The terms of the Cobham offer value Thrane & Thrane at around £270m. Cobham said the terms of the offer would not be increased, save in the event of the intervention of a potential rival bidder.

The offer price is 43% higher than the closing share price of Thrane & Thrane on the NASDAQ OMX Copenhagen exchange on February 24th, the last trading day before the Danish firm revealed it had received a bid approach.

"The combination of Thrane & Thrane with Cobham's SATCOM businesses is highly complementary and would give the combined operation increased technology advantage and scale in maritime, land and airborne SATCOM systems," Cobham claimed.

The plan is for management responsibility for the combined maritime SATCOM business, which would include Cobham's Sea Tel marine SATCOM business, to be transferred to Thrane & Thrane in Denmark. Sea Tel is Cobham's largest SATCOM business unit.

John Devaney, Executive Chairman of Cobham said: "It would be our intention to invest further in Denmark and, as a mark of our commitment, we would transfer management responsibility of our largest SATCOM business to Thrane & Thrane in Denmark on full ownership of the business, and combine our engineering capabilities to bring new products to the market. Thrane & Thrane would have an enhanced future as part of Cobham."

JH