The Precinct consortium has made a third approach for the Jurys Doyle hotel chain, increasing its offer by 25 cent to €16.50 per share in a move that values the group at €1.04 billion.
In addition to dropping its condition that the bid receive unanimous support from the Jurys board, Precinct revealed that it planned to part-fund any deal with loans from Anglo Irish Bank equity financing provided by the businessmen Simon Reuben and his brother David.
The London-based billionaires have interests in a wide range of property, retail, leisure and rail businesses. They entered a sale and leaseback arrangement earlier this year with West Coast Capital, Bank of Scotland and Prestbury on 135 Travelodge hotel properties.
It was unclear last night whether the Jurys Doyle board would convene a special meeting to consider the latest approach or wait until its next scheduled meeting on July 26th.
"As a board they will be meeting as early as possible to consider this evening's announcement and their response to it. They won't be making any comment until such time as that has taken place," said a spokesman.
The removal of the demand for unanimous support will place additional pressure on the non-executive directors to consider the approach in detail.
This precondition and resistance to any sale from the Doyle and Beatty families, owners of 30 per cent of the group and holders of four seats on its board, meant that the non-executive directors were not in a position to move on the previous approaches even if they wished to.
Precinct's latest approach, which was submitted shortly after the Dublin market closed yesterday, emerged five days before the deadline for tenders for the sale of the Jurys Ballsbridge hotel and the Towers hotels next to it in Ballsbridge, south Dublin.
Shares in the hotel group had closed unchanged yesterday at €15.70 after trading as low as €15.50 in early trading. At €16.50, the latest offer is €1.25 stronger than Precinct's original approach in May.
Last week the Takeover Panel handed down a deadline of next Friday to the consortium - controlled by developer Bryan Cullen, solicitor David Coleman and builder JJ Murphy - by which it was to make a final approach or walk away. The panel rejected its application for an extension.
In its statement last night, Precinct made a point of saying that it formulated all its proposals to the Jurys board without being provided with any information to assist the group in its examination of the company.
However, the group said it had attempted to minimise the preconditions to its approach in light of "conversations held with the advisers to Jurys Doyle" following the rejection of the previous approach.
"Precinct and its funding partners have sought to minimise these preconditions to ensure that the revised proposal meets with the approval of the board and its advisers and believe that they have now done so," it said.
"Since the rejection of its previous approach on June 8th, Precinct has waived its previous preconditions relating to obtaining a unanimous recommendation of the board and the receipt of irrevocable commitments from all directors of Jurys Doyle."
While the Reuben brothers were not involved with Precinct at the time of the initial approach, they confirmed their interest some weeks ago.
They would fund Precinct through their vehicle Aldersgate Investments, whose portfolio in Britain includes more than 100 buildings. In a deal last year with West Coast Capital, Bank of Scotland and Prestbury, they bought a £500 million portfolio of 220 pubs in Britain that were leased back for 30 years to Spirit Group.
