Viterra Inc. confirmed March 19 that it has begun exclusive negotiations on a takeover bid, but the would-be buyer was not named. Viterra also confirmed that it had established an auction process and acknowledged reports that offers for the company would need to be at least $16 per share.
As reported last week by Green Markets, Glencore International PLC, a multinational mining and commodities trading company headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, has been named as a likely bidder for Viterra. Reports are circulating that Glencore has launched a joint bid with Agrium Inc. and Richardson International, a privately held grain trader and input retailer based in Winnipeg.
Under the likely terms of such a deal, Agrium would take the bulk of Viterra’s Canadian retail outlets, Richardson would take certain port assets and elevators, and Glencore would take the bulk of the rest of the assets in Canada and Australia. Agrium could conceivably wind up with Viterra’s Australian retail assets as well.
Viterra has so far not confirmed the names of any of its potential suitors, however.
In other takeover news, Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has extended the deadline from March 23 to April 2 for CVR Energy shareholders to tender their shares in his hostile takeover attempt.
Icahn announced on March 16 that he had pushed the expiration for his CVR tender offer to the end of Monday April 2, instead of the end of Friday March 23. Icahn also announced on March 16 that he had pushed out his deadline to resell the company to 15 months instead of nine months.
Icahn had previously stated that he would drop his $30 per share bid for CVR, a deal valued at some $2.6 billion, if less than 36 percent of the outstanding shares had been tendered by March 23. In a letter to shareholders at the time of Icahn’s initial offer in February, CVR Chairman and CEO Jack Lipinski told shareholders to reject the offer, calling it “opportunistic “ and "inadequate."
On March 19, Icahn released another letter to CVR shareholders, criticizing the CVR board for “distorting the facts,” and singling out Lipinski and the $28 million he earned from 2007 to 2010, saying the CEO is “more interested in empire building than in increasing value for shareholders.”
Icahn once again touted his own recent energy investments, telling CVR shareholders that the information was “not to boast but in the hope that you will take very seriously what I have to say about CVR and ignore the distortions disseminated by CVR and its PR firm.”