Waterford Wedgwood has announced the terms of a cash offer for the remaining stake in Royal Doulton valuing the company at €58 million.
The Waterford Wedgwood Group currently approximately 21.16 per cent of Royal Doulton's issued share capital.
Sir Anthony O'Reilly, chairman of Waterford Wedgwood, said the acquisition would "transform" Waterford Wedgwood.
Sir Anthony said "the benefits are immediately apparent. We can add Royal Doulton's revenues to our own revenues without greatly increasing our costs."
Waterford Wedgwood will offer 12p for each Royal Doulton share, representing a premium of around 43 per cent to the closing price on October 20th, the day before the two firms said they were in talks about a takeover.
Waterford Wedgwood said in October it was proposing a cash offer for Royal Doulton. At that time, it said it would issue new shares to cover the costs of the deal, and would issue €100 million worth of new shares in a 5-for-3 rights issue priced at 6 cent per share, hitting its stock.
Shares in Waterford slumped more than 30 per cent at the time as investors expressed surprise the company would choose to do a rights issue at a time when its equity was so lowly rated.
The firm, suffering from a prolonged slump in demand, has warned its pretax result for the first half would be significantly below market expectations.
Waterford said today dealings in the rights issue units would start on December 16th.