PartnerRe said it is ready to meet with EXOR SpA about its revamped upstart bid for the reinsurer, but it once again wants more.
“The PartnerRe Board has determined that the latest EXOR proposal would reasonably be likely to result in a superior proposal,” PartnerRe said in a June 21 statement. Wit this in mind, PartnerRe said it will seek to negotiate with EXOR and offer the Italian investment house the chance to do due diligence, to “determine whether the current offer can be improved both in its price and terms with respects to items previously identified.”
On July 20, EXOR enhanced its $137.50 per share cash offer for PartnerRe ( itself a $6.8 billion deal) by pledging to give PartnerRe’s shareholders a special pre-closing dividend of $3 per share. This offer came just days after PartnerRe and AXIS Capital Holdings announced sweetened terms of their own merger deal first disclosed in January, in a bid to counter EXOR’s unsolicited overtures. EXOR has increased its bid several times before.
While PartnerRe is making an overture to EXOR to talk, it is still standing behind its AXIS agreement, noting that the board still believes it “is superior in value, terms and certainty of closing current to the EXOR proposal.”
For now, at least, PartnerRe is still recommending that shareholders vote for its M&A deal with AXIS, which is slated to close in the 2015 third quarter.
AXIS, meanwhile, released a statement reaffirming its “superior” merger plan with PartnerRe, and noted that “PartnerRe continues to support the … agreement between the two companies.”
Source: PartnerRe, AXIS