Shareholders in Lookers voted on the 130p per share takeover offer by Global Auto Holdings this week and an enormous majority gave it their backing.
The offer was approved by investors accounting for 91% of Lookers share, meaning that publicly-listed Lookers may very well be taken private by the top of the yr, subject to approval by regulatory bodies and other conditions.
Its buyer, Global Auto Holdings, is owned by Kuldeep Billan, founder and executive chairman of Alpha Auto Group, a motor retail group in Canada.
Its inital offer of 120p per share was raised to 130p in July after pushback from Lookers’ stakeholder Cinch.
When he first revealed his interest in Lookers, Billan said: “The proposed acquisition of Lookers represents a compelling opportunity to amass certainly one of the leading UK auto retail groups while partnering with improbable OEM brands and Lookers’ roughly 6,500 strong team members. We look ahead to further constructing upon Lookers’ strong original equipment manufacturer (OEM) relationships by being a trusted and reliable retail partner while delivering strong volumes and a high level of customer experience across a variety of OEM ‘go to market’ strategies.”
Lookers said the brand new offer from Global Auto Holdings represented a rise of 8.3% to the previous beneficial offer of 120p per Lookers share announced on June 20.
The dealer group’s board had accepted the initial offer of £465.4m in June, with Mark Raban, Lookers chief executive, saying the offer would “create a business of greater scale to create a platform for future growth within the UK”.
This Article First Appeared At www.am-online.com
