Alphyra shareholders slow to take up offer

Management at Alphyra persuaded less than 30 per cent of shareholders to accept its offer to buy out the company by its first deadline.

Even the 10-strong MBO team has not yet pledged the full 5.8 per cent of the stock that they own between them to the deal.

The offer has now been extended by a fortnight to February 19th.

Analysts said the take-up of the €2.45 a share offer by the MBO vehicle Rendina for shares in the electronic payments group had been poor but pointed to the fact that US private equity house First Data Corp had only withdrawn its interest in initiating a rival bid last Friday.

"It will be very interesting to see the level of acceptances by the next deadline, especially now that there is no potential rival bidder in the field," said one Dublin analyst, adding that such a bid was unlikely at this stage.

Analysts said that it was interesting the MBO group had not decided to increase its bid. Rendina still has time to do that after the next deadline on February 19th.

While analysts believe Rendina has scope to increase its offer, they believe such scope is limited.

Sources close to the MBO team said it was pleased with the level of acceptances "given that we had First Data Corp waiting in the wings".

"Effectively, this offer only kicked into gear last Friday. We believe the momentum behind the bid will grow, and that is evidenced by the stance of the institutions," they added.

In total, Rendina secured the support of 34.9 per cent of the Alphyra shares by the first deadline.

Of this, 4.9 per cent has been pledged by the MBO team led by Alphyra chief executive Mr John Nagle, chairman Mr Jack McDonnell and finance director Mr John Williamson.

A further 7.8 per cent of the shares have been bought by Benchmark Capital, the US venture capital group which will become the majority shareholder in the privatised company.

According to a spokesman for the MBO, the balance of management's shares had now been pledged to the deal, having missed the deadline because of a technicality.