BUSINESSMAN LESLIE Buckley, who describes himself as a small shareholder in Millington, the winning bidder for listed construction services group Siteserv, has rejected suggestions from rivals that the sale process was flawed.
Isle of Man-based Millington, which is backed by Denis O’Brien, has agreed to pay €45 million for Siteserv pending shareholder approval at a meeting in Dublin tomorrow.
Shareholders will get €5 million but the State-owned Irish Banking Resolution Corporation will receive just €40 million in settlement of a €150 million debt due to it from Siteserv.
Mr Buckley told The Irish Times yesterday: “There were quite a number of offers for the business, which went through a very competitive process as I understand it. The process was very well run by KPMG and Davy and maybe you should talk to them about it.”
French-based Altrad, which approached Siteserv informally a number of times, said this week that it would have paid €60 million for the company, but claimed chief executive Brian Harvey said it was not for sale.
Mr Harvey said yesterday that he did not, at any stage, tell Altrad that Siteserv was not for sale. Siteserv issued a statement saying Altrad never formally approached it. The statement acknowledged that it received an informal approach from a subsidiary, Belle Group.
Mr Buckley said Siteserv was a public company. “There were ways and means for them to buy Siteserv if they wanted to pay €60 million for it,” he argued. “It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and say you’d like to buy it.”
Siteserv did attract a €52 million bid from multinational private equity firm Anchorage, but it is understood that the offer had conditions attached which, the advisers believed, could have reduced the final amount paid.
At that point, the Millington bid was on the table and Mr O’Brien had signalled that he was willing to pay this sum without any further due diligence. This prompted the advisers to enter into exclusive talks with that company.
It also emerged this week that law firm Arthur Cox advised both Siteserv and Millington. “That’s fairly normal,” said Mr Buckley, who is investing nearly €2 million in the deal.
He added that it was “important” for Siteserv to “move rapidly” to conclude the process to prevent any potential loss of customer contracts.
“If this business wasn’t bought and money put into it, there was 2,300 jobs at stake, 900 of them in this country of ours. If somebody didn’t buy that company very fast, I would suggest that Anglo or IBRC would be writing off a hell of a lot more. That’s the other way of looking at it. We were happy to be the winners of that process.”
Mr Buckley said Siteserv was “very strong in some market sectors and we see potential in them. They are in schools, hospitals, pharmaceuticals and power generation.”
He also scotched speculation about Siteserv’s co-founder Niall McFadden, an Irish financier who ran into financial difficulties following the global crash. “Niall McFadden will have nothing to do with the business going forward.”
