Specialist fund administrator Sanne Group has rejected a £1.34 billion (€1.6 billion) offer from UK private equity firm Cinven to buy the company.
A cash offer of 830 pence per share was made on May 4 and rejected by Jersey-based Sanne on May 11. Cinven has until June 11 to either make an improved offer or else walk away from the deal.
The bid is indicative of the increased market attention on the specialist fund administration sector which has seen many of its players benefit from a growth in specialist funds like private equity, debt, real estate and infrastructure.
In 2020, Sanne saw its revenues rise by 7.3% to £169.7 million while operating profit rose by £8.4 million to £48 million.
In a statement, Sanne’s non-executive chair, Rupert Robson, said: “We are extremely confident in Sanne’s strengths and future prospects, especially as our markets continue to recover and our well-supported equity raise will assist us in executing on the robust M&A pipeline.
“As a board, we are aware of our responsibility to create and capture value for our shareholders, but this proposal falls well short of that threshold for us to fully engage,” he added.
Private equity interest in the third party management company sector has also increased over the last 12 to 18 months.
Meanwhile the bidding war for another specialist fund administrator, the Australia-based Mainstream Group, continues.
Mainstream has received competing bids from both SS&C and Apex Group. At the time of writing, Apex had submitted a bid of A$2.65 per share on May 18 in response to a A$2.61 bid from SS&C made on May 14.
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