By
Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:02 AM on 22nd March 2011
The UK’s only listed ports company is to be taken into private hands after agreeing to a £760m takeover from its largest shareholder.
Tilbury Docks owner Forth Ports has given its backing to a 1630p-a-share offer from Arcus European Infrastructure Fund, which already owns 22.8% of the company as well as continental Europe’s second biggest dry bulk port operator Euroports.
Arcus has pledged to keep Forth’s headquarters in Scotland and said it wants to ‘support and grow’ the group’s core ports business.
Edinburgh-based Forth Ports has eight port sites including Tilbury
(above) in London, Scotland’s largest container port at Grangemouth, and Leith
in Edinburgh
David Richardson, chairman of Forth Ports, said: ‘The Arcus offer
gives Forth Ports shareholders the opportunity to realise their
investment for cash at a fair price.
‘It is also pleasing that this successful Scottish company will continue to be run from Scotland.’
Details of the takeover, which was first revealed earlier this
month, come as Forth also posted a 10% rise in annual underlying
pre-tax profits to £36.6m.
Edinburgh-based Forth Ports has eight port sites including Tilbury
in London, Scotland’s largest container port at Grangemouth, and Leith
in Edinburgh.
The bid from Arcus – an investment firm formed by the management
buyout of part of Babcock Brown’s European infrastructure
business in July 2009 – is its second within a year after a 1400p a
share proposal from a consortium headed by the group – worth £640m –
was rejected in April.
It latest offer includes a commitment to pay a 20p a share dividend,
with the total value representing an 8% premium to the closing price of
Forth’s shares before it confirmed the approach, and a 14% premium to
the value of shares before takeover rumours sent the stock higher.
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