Brookfield’s $10.6 Bln Bid For Origin Energy Expected To Fail On Monday
December 4, 2023
The outcome of a Brookfield consortium’s $10.6 billion bid for Australia’s Origin Energy will be officially known on Monday, with investors expected to vote down its year-long attempt to buy the country’s largest power retailer.
– Reuters.
The latest shareholder of Origin, the A$300 billion pension fund AustralianSuper, had said that it would refuse the A$9.39 per share offer.
AustralianSuper retains a total of 17% of Origin, which is supposedly sufficient to block a bid that needs a minimum of 75% support of the total votes cast at the investor meeting held in Sydney.
On 23rd November, Origin said,
“when the vote was adjourned after the consortium lodged a revised proposal, proxy votes showed the bid would have failed to win had the meeting gone ahead.”
On Friday, shares of Origin closed at A$819, which is the lowest in almost nine months.
“The market has already factored in the bid failing and the stock is roughly fairly valued in our opinion, so I wouldn’t expect much impact if the bid fails,”
said Adrian Atkins, a Morningstar analyst.
“If the Brookfield consortium comes back with a hostile off-market offer, there could be upside to the share price.”
Luke Edwards, head of renewable energy and transition at Brookfield Australia, said on Friday that if the deal had been voted down, the consortium would have to consider making a new government plan to reshape the entire energy market that had negatively impacted its outlook of Origin.
“We will do this work before considering whether to continue pursuing a proposal to acquire Origin Energy or the Origin Energy Markets business,”
he added.
Origin did not get back to the request to comment after the vote had happened.
Last week, the board of the company rejected a revised backup bid from Brookfield consortium, which the energy organization said was too complicated and extremely conditional.
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