HBAYF - Hudson's Bay Will Go Private After All
Back in June, Hudson's Bay (OTC: HBAYF) Chairman Richard Baker and several strategic partners offered to buy the rest of the department store conglomerate for $9.45 Canadian ($7.12) per share. (The partners already own more than half of the company.) However, a special committee of Hudson's Bay's independent directors flatly rejected this offer two months later. The committee said the proposed price undervalued the company.
Initially, Baker's group seemed unwilling to budge on its offer. However, on Monday, Hudson's Bay announced that the company had accepted a go-private deal at a revised price of CA$10.30 ($7.87) per share.
The revised buyout price for Hudson's Bay is only 9% higher than the value that the directors had rejected out of hand in August. It is also near the low end of the CA$10 ($7.64) to CA$12.25 ($9.35) range given by TD Securities, which was hired to prepare a formal valuation of the company's shares. Despite these factors, the directors decided to accept the revised offer for three main reasons.