Agarwal makes firm offer to delist Vedanta from London Stock Exchange

Mining mogul Anil Agarwal's family trust today made a firm USD 1 billion offer to buy 33.47 per cent non-promoter shares of Vedanta Resources in a deal that values the conglomerate at USD 3.07 billion.

"Under the terms of the offer, Vedanta shareholders will receive USD 10.89 per share in cash for each Vedanta share," the company said in a regulatory filing detailing about the USD 1 billion offer.

In addition, the shareholders will be entitled to receive the dividend of USD 0.41 per share in respect of the 12 months ended March 31, 2018.

"Taken together, the offer price and the FY2018 dividend in aggregate represent a total value of USD 11.30 per share, which on the basis of the announcement exchange rate represents an illustrative premium of approximately 32.4 per cent to the closing price of 647 pence per Vedanta share on June 29, 2018," it said.

Vedanta had on July 2 announced Agarwal's plans to delist the company.

Agarwal's Volcan Investments, which currently holds 66.53 per cent of Vedanta, made a cash offer for 825 pence a share.

Vedanta, which owns copper, aluminum, iron ore, oil and steel businesses, was the first Indian firm to list on London Stock Exchange in 2003. It has lately been facing environmental pressure on its operations.

As many as 13 protesters were killed in police firing at the firm's copper smelter plant in Tamil Nadu last month that led to political opposition to the company in the UK and drop in its share price. There were demands from some quarters that the firm be delisted from the London Stock Exchange.

Protesters at Tuticorin were demanding the closure of Vedanta's copper smelter as they saw it as polluting the environment when they were fired upon by the police.

Agarwal, however, has denied any link between the delisting and the protests. There is "no link at all" with the Tuticorin incident, he had told PTI earlier this month. "This is driven by the desire to simplify the corporate structure".

In the stock exchange filing today, Agarwal termed the offer as "a natural progression of our journey to simplify the Vedanta Group's corporate structure."