The bidding war for Associated British Ports (ABP) escalated yesterday after a consortium led by Australia's Macquarie launched a counter approach for the ports operator just hours after a Goldman Sachs-led group raised its initial offer.
ABP said it had received a pre-conditional proposal from Macquarie indicating a cash price of "at least" 840p a share, valuing it at £2.58 billion (€3.77 billion).
The group said it was evaluating Macquarie's proposal along with the revised offer of 840p from Admiral, the Goldman Sachs consortium.
Admiral had raised its ABP bid from 810p in a pre-emptive move against Macquarie, which expressed interest on Wednesday.
The prospect of another intense bid battle after last week's tussle between Goldman and Ferrovial for control of the British Airport Authority sent ABP shares up more than 5 per cent in London to close at 826.5p.
Speculation about a counter bid began on Wednesday when Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW), which is advising Macquarie and 3i, began buying ABP shares. DKW managed to acquire nearly 4.7 million shares at 819.6p, which means Macquarie now holds 1.7 per cent of ABP.
Meanwhile, Goldman revealed it bought about 15.4 million ABP shares, or nearly 5 per cent of the company, at 810p on Wednesday.
The new price is nearly 43 per cent above ABP's share price on February 7th, the day before news of Ferrovial's interest in BAA pushed shares in UK infrastructure groups higher.
Alastair Gunn, analyst at Arbuthnot Securities, said the current valuation was high but an even higher bid was likely given the difficulty of assessing the value of ABP's property .
While in most countries port land is publicly owned, ABP is one of the few port operators to own all the land in its ports.
"No one knows how much the properties are worth unless you have a look at the books, which Goldman did," said Mr Gunn, referring to ABP's announcement last month that it would let Admiral examine its books.
"The fact that Goldman came back so quickly must mean it saw something in the books to justify its bid."
