After a dispute that lasted four months, ibas has come to terms with its majority shareholder kpn. KPN will pay $3 per share [1] to buy the rest of the company, totalling $93.3M. The special committee of IBasis’s board has unanimously approved the new bid, and thus it appears that the soap opera will come to an end.
The initial bid of $1.55 per share [2] in mid-July went nowhere, as everyone knew it would be too low and the market bid the price up into the $1.80s immediately. After that was formally rejected and IBasis filed a lawsuit against the deal, KPN came back with a bid of $2.25 [3]. That bid was also rejected, but it did demonstrate that KPN was quite serious about this acquisition. The only question was how high would they bid? The answer apparently $3, almost twice their initial offer. It never made much sense for KPN to worry too much about the pennies here, the difference between $48M and $93M is peanuts to a company of their size, but of course, $45M does buy a lot of peanuts no matter who is eating them.
What with Icahn’s withdrawal of his bid for XO [4] and Ciena’s victory in the auction for Nortel [5], this leaves us ending the year with little drama left to play out. What’s a blogger to do?