GKN dismisses Melrose’s £7.4b hostile bid as ‘fake’
British engineering giant rejects turnaround specialist Melrose’s bid, saying terms of paper-and-cash offer ‘effectively unchanged’ from first approach
Bengaluru: British engineering group GKN dismissed Melrose’s £7.4 billion (Dh37.5 billion or $10.2 billion) hostile bid as “misleading” on Thursday.
GKN rejected turnaround specialist Melrose’s bid on Wednesday, saying that the terms of the paper-and-cash offer “effectively unchanged” from a first private approach on January 8, which GKN also spurned.
“GKN’s Board considers 32 per cent to be a fake premium. Melrose’s market capitalisation on 5 January was significantly smaller than GKN’s on the same day ... and Melrose brings no industrial synergies,” it said on Thursday. “The true, delivered premium is less than 11 per cent,” GKN, which has since set out plans to split its aerospace and automotive businesses, added.
