Lithium Australia’s takeover bid for Lepidico fails

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Lithium Australia’s takeover offer period for fellow listed Lepidico has expired, after it failed to generate traction with the takeover target’s shareholders.

Lithium Australia in February launched a A$23.8-million off-market scrip bid for Lepidico, offering that company’s shareholders one of its own shares for every 13.25 Lepidico shares held.

Lepidico maintained throughout the offer period that shareholders should reject the offer, citing an independent assessment which found that the offer was neither fair, nor reasonable. The offer valued Lepidico shares at between 1.6c and 2.1c a share, compared with a trading price of 1.35c a share for Lithium Australia on March 24.

Lithium Australia, in turn, argued that the independent assessment had placed too much reliance on the quoted market price analysis where there was not a deep and liquid market for the shares to support the analysis, and that the expert had used an inappropriate time period to select the minority trading price.

Lepidico said on Tuesday that Lithium Australia had only received acceptance of around 0.6% of the company’s shares, excluding the pre-bid agreement acceptances.