The takeover battle for Mangalore Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd. (MCFL) has gone in favour of UB group Chairman Vijay Mallya as Deepak Fertilizers & Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd. (DFPCL) could not garner enough shares despite offering a far better price to shareholders.
Now Mr. Mallya, along with his partner Saroj Kumar Poddar of Zuari Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd. (ZFCL), will retain control over MCFL, which will remain in the UB group’s fold.
The competitive open offers of DFPCL and ZFCL for acquiring 26 per cent additional stake in MCFL closed on Monday. As per preliminary data, DFPCL could mop-up less than 10 million shares, amounting to single-digit stake as against the target of 26 per cent through this open offer.
Earlier, DFPCL had acquired 25 per cent stake in MCFL. According to officials involved in the open offer, the counting of shares tendered in physical form was still on. The open offer fell short of targets despite nearly 9 million shares changing hands at the BSE and the NSE in the past five days.
Among institutional shareholders, Morgan Stanley on Monday tendered 4.50 lakh shares to DFPCL, officials said. Last week, the Karnataka State Co-operative Marketing Federation had tendered 27.07 lakh shares equivalent to 2.28 per cent stake in MCFL to Deepak.
DFPCL’s latest open offer price of Rs.93.60 per share was higher than ZFCL’s open offer price of Rs.81.60.
United Breweries (Holdings), Kingfisher Finvest India and McDowell Holdings were persons acting in concert with ZFCL to thwart DFPCL’s takeover bid.
ZFCL has 16 per cent stake in MCFL, while the UB group has 22 per cent stake in MCFL.
