Korea’s state-owned oil company, Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) has launched a hostile takeover bid of Aberdeen, UK based Dana Petroleum, worth US$2.9 billion following a string of friendly acquisitions over the past two years.
Dana Petroleum has exploration and production operations in and around the UK, north and west Africa, earlier in the month it made an oil field discovery in Egypt in the Gulf of Suez.
KNOC which has a track record of international acquisitions, offered to pay £18 (approximately $28) per share but Dana’s board rejected the offer forcing the Korean oil company to make direct moves to the company’s shareholders after garnering support from nearly half of its shareholders.
In a statement to the London Stock Exchange, Dana advised shareholders and convertible bond holders “to take no action in respect of the offers” and said that it would give an update on its production, development and exploration activities with its half-year results next Friday.
On August 12, Dana said that “It is very clear to the Dana Board that KNOC is also unwilling to ascribe any value to Dana’s ongoing business development programme, despite being aware of significant, well advanced, non-public and valuable activities in this area, which could materially increase Dana’s oil production and reserves in the near term, and which Dana believes would be in line with KNOC’s publicly stated strategy of acquiring reserves and production.”
KNOC’s senior executive vice president, Seong-Hoon Kim called the share price offer “full and fair” taking into account Dana’s recent operational and corporate transaction announcements.
“We believe that our offer of 1,800 pence per share fully and fairly reflects all of Dana’s recently announced and ongoing developments, together with its exploration potential,” Kim said.
“We believe that we have not alternative other than to put our attractive proposal directly to shareholders given the inability to reach a private agreement with the Board of Dana” he concluded.
