SGH’s Ryan Stokes says revising BlueScope bid would be a ‘direct violation’ of M&A law
Lingering hopes that SGH and Steel Dynamics would lift the value of their offer price to acquire BlueScope have seemingly been dealt another blow.
SGH CEO Ryan Stokes has said any move by his company to amend its $15 billion acquisition offer for BlueScope would be a “pretty direct violation of truth in takeovers” regulations, in a rebuke of the steelmaker’s efforts to keep price negotiations open.
“It was ‘best and final’ for a reason, I mean, that’s where value breaks, and so to argue around that…we’ve got lawyers, got legal advice, and no, there’s no way around that,” Stokes said in response to a question from Capital Brief on the sidelines on the Macquarie Australia conference.
After a sharply worded rejection to an earlier $13 billion bid in January, BlueScope chair Jane McAloon’s rebuttal to the $15 billion offer in late February tried to pick a pathway for SGH and US partner Steel Dynamics to get around claims that its offer was ‘best and final’.
The move was done in the hopes of enabling further price negotiations without violating the ‘truth in takeovers’ rule.
