As we went to press on Monday 13 June, the Go-Ahead Group announced that it had received two separate takeover bids
The Kelsian Group and a consortium consisting of Kinetic and Globalvia Inversiones have made separate unsolicited, conditional approaches regarding possible cash offers for the entire issued and yet to be issued share capital of the Go-Ahead Group. The Go-Ahead Board has evaluated the offers and, following revised proposals from the interested parties, is expected to recommend the offers to shareholders. Shares in the Group rose rapidly to 1,406.00p, up 16.20%.
Kelsian Group was formerly known as SeaLink Travel Group, with its London operations trading as Tower Transit. Stagecoach announced on 27 May that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Kelsian’s Tower Transit East London bus operations and depot at Lea Interchange for a total of £20m. RATP Dev London Transit operations, the joint venture between RATP Dev UK and Tower Transit in West London, continue unchanged. The group also operates buses in Australia and Singapore.
Kinetic offer a range of bus services, including urban, regional and school, charter and corporate, aviation, and workforce transport services across Australasia with 70 depots and 4,000 buses in cities including cities Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, Adelaide and the Gold Coast and other smaller regional communities.
Globalvia is a Spanish based consortium with headquarters in Madrid. It is a worldwide infrastructure concession management group, specialising in highways and railways, and currently manages 27 projects in eight different countries including the USA. In Ireland, Globalviaalso has shareholdings in M50 Concession Limited, and the N6 motorway public-private partnership scheme.
Both interested parties have until 11 July to make an offer or withdraw from the process.
