Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian’s investment company on Tuesday said its tender offer for 20m additional Ford shares attracted a huge response and will easily enable it to increase its stake in the automaker to about 5.5%.
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Tracinda said in statement cited by the Associated Press (AP) its tender offer of US$8.50 a share drew offers of more than 1bn of the company’s shares. It will buy 20m for about $170m.
Nearly half of Ford’s 2.17bn outstanding shares were tendered, AP noted.
“The response from investors is understandable given that the offer represented a significant premium over Ford’s current share price,” Ford spokesman Mark Truby told the news agency.
“The Ford team remains focused on executing our plan to transform Ford into a lean global enterprise delivering profitable growth for all,” he added.
The Associated Press noted that Tracinda launched a cash tender offer on 9 May 9 for the additional shares, which was a slight premium to the stock’s 8 May closing price of $8.20 but the shares have since declined more than 20% and were down 6 cents to $6.30 in pre-market trading on Tuesday.
