Bermudan buyer proposes fixed 74p price for Lloyd’s insurer
Haverford Bermuda Limited (HBL) is reviewing its plans to buy 25% of Omega after the Lloyd’s insurer revealed worse-than-expected losses.
The Bermudan investment firm has proposed offering a fixed price of 74p a share for the 25% stake and allowing its previous offer to lapse.
The original deal offered a range of between 70p and 83p a share for the Omega stake. Omega revealed on Tuesday that Haverford was considering a revised bid.
In its third-quarter interim management statement, Omega revealed that its first-half losses had deteriorated by $6m (£3.8m), and that it had incurred an additional $10m of third quarter losses and $9m of attritional losses.
HBL said it had requested further information from Omega so that it could “understand the reasons for and consequences of the very significant and unexpected deterioration in Omega’s financial position and prospects, in particular in comparison to the position indicated by HBL’s previous due diligence.”
It added: “HBL is continuing to review this information and is considering its position.” HBL expects to make a further announcement tomorrow.
The deadline for receiving tenders for HBL’s initial offer was 13.00 yesterday. HBL said it received tenders for “substantially more” than the maximum number of shares that it was looking to acquire under the offer.
HBL said it disagrees with Omega’s opinion that the original offer cannot lapse because the minimum levels of tenders have been received.
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