GE's open offer to buy stake in Alstom T&D gets poor response

US giant General Electric Co's (GE's) Rs 1,926-crore open offer to acquire 6.4 crore publicly held shares in Alstom T&D India has elicited a poor response, with just 43,439 shares getting tendered.

GE has accepted offer for 42,570 equity shares, out of 43,439 tendered by shareholders, for Rs 1.28 crore under its open offer to acquire 6.4 crore shares for Rs 1,926 crore, Alstom T&D India said in a BSE filing today.

The statement said that post offer, GE acquired 0.02% of the equity, while it planned to take over 25% stake through the open offer.

The offer opened on January 18, 2016 and closed on February 1, 2016. The date of payment of consideration was February 15.

The offer was made at a price of Rs 300.98 per share while the prevailing price of the scrip was over Rs 400 per unit.

Alstom T&D India shares closed at Rs 375.40 on the BSE, down 3.79% from the previous close.

Earlier, the company had informed BSE that an independent directors' committee (IDC) had said that the market price of the shares of the company on BSE and NSE was Rs 447.90 and Rs 449.10 respectively at close of trading on Friday, which was more than the offer price.

However, the panel had said that the offer price of Rs 300.98 per equity share was in accordance with Sebi SAST (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) regulations.

The IDC was headed by Kirit S Parikh and included Rakesh Nath, Chandan Roy and Bhanu Bhushan as members.

The US-based energy and healthcare giant GE had made the open offer following its $16.9 billion bid to acquire the global energy assets of French multinational Alstom.

Alstom has two listed entities in India with business interests in power generation and transportation (Alstom India) and transmission and distribution sector (Alstom T&D).

The French parent owns 68.56% stake in Alstom India and 75% in Alstom T&D.

GE has made open offer for buying all the publicly held shares in both the companies.

GE had also made an open offer to acquire 174.79 lakh shares representing 26% stake in Alstom India Ltd for Rs 440.32 per equity share, aggregating to Rs 769.64 crore.