Give and take gets Origin $8.90 headline price The board stood...

Give and take gets Origin $8.90 headline price

The board stood reasonably firm on its $9 a share aspiration, despite pressure from the Brookfield and EIG Partners camps to agree to a lower offer. It’s hard to see too many Origin investors complaining about the concessions when its shares last traded at $7.01.
The new bid, at $8.90 a share, would see more than 90 per cent of Origin’s investors (by number) receive the headline price.
Those investors with more than 100,000 shares - about 230 per the annual report - would receive the Australian dollar equivalent of $4.334 per share plus $US3.194 a share. [Which adds up to $8.90 when the $A is trading at $US70¢].
Both sides will crow they got something out of the deal.
The next step is Brookfield/EIG negotiating a scheme implementation deed. The new bid’s still non-binding and conditional, and there’s still regulatory approvals (ACCC approval in particular could be interesting), a shareholder vote and the like before it could complete.
However, it was an unexpectedly firm showing that there’s life in the deal at a time when plenty of investors, analysts and financiers thought it was on life support if not dead.
If there’s one thing to take away from Wednesday morning’s announcement, it’s that the AFR is full of tittle tattle and gossip merchants and nobody should pay any attention to it ever again. While it’s been a tough few months for both sides, they’re still finding a middle ground.