PointsBet has rejected a revised takeover offer from Betr and maintained its support for a competing A$1.20 (£0.57) per share cash offer from MIXI.
The company’s board met on Monday ahead of a pivotal vote regarding MIXI’s offer, with a PointsBet press release revealing that 95.7% of votes cast were in favour of the Japanese conglomerate’s proposal, with just 4.3% against.
However, Betr, which saw its own “off-market, all scrip takeover offer” rebuffed last week, has claimed that its votes against MIXI’s proposal were not included in the total and the BlueBet parent company has demanded a recount as a result.
Betr is currently PointsBet’s largest shareholder with a 19.9% stake, but its most recent bid of 3.81 Betr shares for every PointsBet share, which it claimed would equate to A$1.22 (£0.48) per share based on Betr’s A$0.32 share price, has failed to get a deal over the line.
In response to the overwhelming majority support for MIXI’s offer, Betr released the following statement: “It appears that the chair of the meeting has impermissibly excluded betr’s vote against the scheme and provided no basis for doing so.
“The company confirms it validly lodged its proxy vote against the scheme as recorded in the PointsBet announcement this morning. Betr did not, at any time, revoke that proxy.
“Betr expects that the chair of the meeting will immediately conduct a recount of the vote and include the Betr proxy vote in full.
“If the chair of the meeting fails to do so and announces the results prior to the second court hearing tomorrow morning (June 26), Betr will challenge the exclusion of its vote at tomorrow’s second court hearing.”
The statement went on to outline that in the interim, Betr plans to thrash out the details of its unconditional takeover offer and will release more information regarding the bid in the coming days.
The accusation Betr’s votes were excluded from the total count has been quashed by PointsBet, which alleged that the proxy was revoked, with no votes from Betr cast in the process.
In the meantime, PointsBet continues to support MIXI’s takeover terms, which values the operator at A$402m (£192m), amid a backdrop of uncertainties surrounding the rival offer from Betr that, according to PointsBet, includes “significant integration and implementation challenges” as well as overestimated synergies.
During yesterday’s vote, Brett Paton, PointsBet chair, referred to the overwhelming backing MIXI’s proposal received and remarked: “This further reinforces the informed understanding of our shareholders that there is only one proposal which is capable of acceptance, binding, fully funded and delivers cash and timing certainty of $1.20 per PointsBet share – and that is the MIXI scheme.
“We have been dealing with Betr on varying non-binding indicative offers for some time now. All have been accompanied by significant media commentary, speculation and unsubstantiated forecasts. None have culminated in a formal proposal.”
The post Betr demands recount as PointsBet shareholders approve MIXI takeover first appeared on EGR Intel.
BlueBet parent company claims its votes against the Japanese conglomerate’s offer were removed, as rival A$1.20 per share cash offer backed by more than 95% of shareholders
The post Betr demands recount as PointsBet shareholders approve MIXI takeover first appeared on EGR Intel.