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Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Inc.
Challenge: Saskatchewan Wheat Pool Inc. (The
Pool) engaged Kingsdale Shareholder Services prior to launching
an unsolicited takeover bid for Agricore United. After a long,
protracted battle, The Pool reached agreement with Agricore
United that it would support The Pool's revised offer and reached
agreement with potential white knight James Richardson International
Limited to purchase certain Agricore United assets from The
Pool post-transaction. Because of the length of the takeover
battle, the various offers and counter-offers and the number
of players involved, the heavily retail Agricore United shareholder
base was suffering from confusion and deal fatigue. However,
in order for the transaction to proceed a minimum of 75% of
Agricore United common shareholders had to tender into The Pool's
offer. With such a high threshold and a very large retail component,
it was crucial that Kingsdale reach out to even the small retail
shareholders, most of whom were farmers concerned about how
the deal would impact their livelihood.
Solution: Kingsdale had been in regular contact
with the Agricore United shareholder base, both retail and institutional
shareholders (including arbitrage and hedge funds), throughout
the entire deal process. In addition to telephone and mail campaigns,
Kingsdale was involved in town hall meetings to answer the questions
of concerned farmer-shareholders. Once the final deal was announced,
Kingsdale sent a pre-recorded voice message to over 20,000 Agricore
United shareholders urging them to tender into the final offer
from The Pool and suggesting that they call Kingsdale for assistance.
The Kingsdale call centre was beefed up to handle the resulting
high volume of inbound calls.
Result: Kingsdale's dedicated efforts and innovative
approach paid off as approximately 81.6% of the Agricore United
shareholders tendered to the offer. The Pool was then able to
take up those shares and extend the offer to allow shareholders
who had not yet tendered to deposit their securities to the
offer. After The Pool executed on a subsequent plan of arrangement,
Agricore United is now a wholly owned subsidiary. |
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