Privately owned property investment manager and venture capital business Palmer Capital has gazumped Internos Real Investments' bid for Invista Real Estate Management Holdings and secured the backing of the Invista board for its bid.
Invista's two biggest shareholders, HBOS Insurance & Investment Group and the Wellcome Trust, both of which had previously accepted a rival bid from Internos Real Investments, have jumped ship and given undertakings to vote in favour of the scheme of arrangement which will see Palmer take control of Invista. Together these shareholders own just under 80% of the issued ordinary share capital of Invista, so this looks like a done deal unless a rival bid emerges or Internos ups its offer. The undertakings from HBOS Insurance and the Wellcome Trust can only be revoked in the event of a rival bid being received that is worth at least one-eighth more than the value of the Palmer bid.
Palmer is paying 14.75p in cash for each Invista ordinary share and £1 in cash for each Invista preferred ordinary share in a deal which values Invista at £39.67m.
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The deal will see Palmer pay an 83.5% premium to the share price on May 22nd, the day before the offer from Internos was announced.
The final price of £39.67m is also 18% higher than a rival offer by Internos Real Investments that originally had the backing of the Invista board.
Invista, which currently has assets under management of £749m, is expected to come under Palmer's control some time in the second half of 2012.
Invista's share price was up 17% at 10:16 but has still fallen 87% in the last five years.
JH
