Shares and company takeovers

[PeteXXX]

Hopefully an answer today will help.

A company I have shares from a sharesave scheme in the process taken over and the board is recommending acceptance of the offer. A reasonableish price per share has been mentioned by the new owners (presuming the shareholders agree to the takeover) pleasantly above current market value.

Q: Will I be able to buy more shares tomorrow (Monday 5th) at the current price and then have all my shares lumped into the 'pot' or will I only get top dollar for the shares I presently own? And, will share sales be stopped now. If not, when?

TIA

 

[figbat]

If the offer is official then the market value will quickly increase to at or around the offer price. This happened to a company I worked for - it was acquired by a larger rival for nearly double the pre-offer share price. The share price pretty much doubled overnight as a a consequence. Those of us sitting on pools of shares from sharesave schemes were quids in, plus there were ongoing schemes at relatively low option prices that were left to run, meaning even more quids in. The kicker for some people was that they had diligently joined every sharesave scheme over many years and simply pooled the shares. They were then forced to sell them all at the offer price, meaning they had a large windfall but at the expense of a significant capital gains tax bill.

 

[PeteXXX]

The shares did rise significantly last week when a takeover offer was turned down by the board. The new offer has been accepted by the board but not yet voted on by the shareholders and the markets have not yet opened to buy or sell.

I'm happy with my choice of not selling my shares once the dividend was paid last week.. That would have cost me a really nice bike!!

The company in question is Morrisons: MRW