FINANCIAL SERVICES company IFG has reiterated that it has not yet received an official offer for the company after Edmund Truell, the main investor behind one of two potential bids for the company, said the process was moving at a slower pace than had been expected.
A spokeswoman for IFG said yesterday the listed company had not yet received any offer for the company.
“We have acted and continue to act in accordance with our duties and responsibilities to all shareholders,” she said, adding that the company was taking advice from its advisers Davy and Macquarie.
IFG yesterday released details of its new long-term incentive plan which will replace the previous incentive plan for executives and directors which ended in December. Shareholders will vote on the plan at an extraordinary general meeting scheduled to take place after the company’s agm on June 29th.
IFG first announced it had received an approach for the company six weeks ago. Almost three weeks later it confirmed it had received a second approach.
UK hedge fund Bregal Capital and a private equity company owned by Edmund Treull, the main financier behind Fiordland, IFG’s 19 per cent shareholder, are the two suitors.
Fiordland became a 19 per cent shareholder in IFG when it provided half of the €50 million raised by IFG to buy British pension company James Hay in late 2009.
The acquisition of James Hay succeeded in transforming IFG from a financial services company with strong roots in the Irish mortgage business into a leading player in the lucrative bespoke self-invested personal pensions market in Britain.
IFG’s share price, which had been trading at around the €1.30 to €1.40 level for most of this year, has soared following the announcement of the preliminary offer on May 4th. It closed at €1.90 yesterday.
Other significant shareholders in IFG include institutional shareholders Dexia and Nordea Bank Danmark, UK hedge fund Promethean, and TS Capital, an investment vehicle for Philip Lynch’s One51.
On June 2nd, IFG confirmed that Peter Priestley, Fiordland’s representative on the IFG board, had “absented himself from all deliberations, meetings and decisions of the board during the current period”.
IFG’s agm will take place on June 29th at the Radisson St Helen’s hotel in Dublin 4.
