KEY POINTS:
Canadian bidders for Auckland International Airport want directors to speed up consideration of other offers for the company.
The airport yesterday said it had been approached by a "credible" alternative international party and had signed a confidentiality deed.
Yesterday's announcement comes a week after the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) opened its $3.6555 a share bid to take its stake in the airport to 40 per cent.
The airport's board has rejected the offer.
Auckland Airport chairman Tony Frankham said the party in yesterday's announcement had initially expressed an interest when the board asked its financial advisers to seek any other takeover offers last month.
After the signing of the confidentiality deed, this party had been provided access to preliminary due diligence, he said.
Although he refused to give anything away about the new party, market speculation yesterday focused on Australia's Macquarie Bank.
"If you look at what the board doesn't like about the Canadian offer - it is a partial bid and they don't have airport experience - and work back to who is in a position to meet those conditions, then Macquarie is the most likely contender," said one market source who asked not to be named.
Macquarie Bank typically prefers to make full takeovers. It is widely believed to have been watching the airport sale process since it began without ever declaring its hand.
Subsidiary company Macquarie Airports actually sparked the action on the airport with a market raid on the stock back in May.
Macquarie is also flush since selling out of Rome airport for more than $2 billion and raising more than $8 billion in the European market.
Given the unstable environment on world markets, infrastructure assets are likely to be preferred targets of those with cash to invest.
The airport's share price closed up 8c at $2.80 yesterday.
Vice-president and head of infrastructure for CPPIB Graeme Bevans said he wanted to know why shareholders would not know the substance of a counter-proposal before the expiry of the CPPIB offer on March 13.
"The company should be working in the best interests of shareholders to expedite this process so that shareholders have sufficient details of any competing proposal to be able to make an informed decision on the CPPIB offer," said Bevans.
But Frankham said the board would reveal more if and when the other party agreed to waive confidentiality and if it was in the interests of shareholders.
"We do not propose rushing into this and we will be dealing with it in the new year as soon as we can come back from a short holiday," he said.
Formal clearance from CPPIB to seek other proposals while CPPIB's partial takeover offer was open to shareholders "was recent news".
Half the airport's board had been in their roles for only a month and he said it was unlikely any new offer would be fully assessed by March 13.
Frankham said he "simply did not know" the likely structure of any offer but if it was not a full takeover that would be considered.
The board has already indicated it would have been open to the CPPIB bid had it been an offer for 100 per cent of the company
"We are ... trying to engage other parties ... that are better for shareholders than the CPPIB offer."
