Becalmed ports bid has ARC in a bind

The Auckland Regional Council has made its $848 million takeover offer for the Ports of Auckland unconditional - but it still is becalmed at 87 per cent and is probably eyeing the dangerous waters of the Takeovers Code as it considers its next move.

Auckland Regional Holdings (ARH), the infrastructure investment arm of the regional council, yesterday declared unconditional its $8 a share offer for the 20 per cent of the port company it does not already own.

Last night it said it had 87.3pc.

The offer was announced on April 1 and closes on July 15, after three extensions during which the offer price has been unchanged.

Declaring its offer unconditional yesterday morning, ARH said it had acceptances from 2400 shareholders totalling 7.1 million shares. There are 6000 shareholders excluding ARH on the port company's share register.

ARH said shareholders who had already accepted its offer would be paid within seven days. Last night ARH said it needed 2.7 per cent to initiate compulsory acquisition of the balance of shares.

Takeover panel senior executive officer Kerry Morrell said ARH could extend its offer for another two months now that it had declared its bid unconditional.

Once a takeover offer attracts 90 per cent acceptances the bidder can compulsorily acquire the balance of the shares - but there are fish hooks.

If ARH gets to the end of the maximum offer period without reaching 90 per cent acceptances, it will have to make a new takeover offer or put its ambitions on hold for 12 months.

Morrell said ARH would not be able to "creep", to use sharemarket vernacular - quietly acquiring shares as they became available for sale - towards the 90 per cent benchmark, if it had already increased its holding by more than 5 per cent through this process.

"It works on a countback. They would have to go out for a year before the countback would allow them to move.

"Then they would be able to do it by creep."