Engineering group picked off London Stock Exchange in £4.1bn deal
Rotork is set to become the latest company snapped off the London Stock Exchange by a foreign buyer after agreeing to a £4.1bn takeover by Swiss rival ABB.
The engineering group agreed to pay 506p per share in cash for the FTSE 250 firm, comprising 503p in cash and a dividend of up to 3p.
The offer price is a 73 per cent premium of Rotork’s closing share price on 15 July.
The group’s board unanimously agreed to recommend the offer to shareholders.
ABB’s chief executive, Morten Wierod, said: “We are convinced of the compelling strategic fit of the transaction.”
Rotork will operate a separate division to ABB’s automation business, and is anticipated to add three per cent to the Zurich-based group’s total revenue.
ABB, which is one of Europe’s largest industrial engineering groups and employs over 100,000 people, said the acquisition would bolster and expand its automation division.
Rotork’s shares rocketed 66.9 per cent in early trading to 486.6p, pushing the stock up 49 per cent since January
Overseas buyers swarm the London Stock Exchange
The deal marks yet another London listed company being snapped up by a foreign buyer.
The market has now seen 29 proposed takeovers of UK companies worth more than £100m according to Peel Hunt, while IPO activity remains subdued.
There were only seven listings in the first half of the year, raising £577.2m. The total market value of the new listings reached just £2.2bn.
Larger firms have also fallen into the sights of foreign buyers this year, including FTSE 100 insurer Beazley which was taken over in a £8bn deal by Zurich.
Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith slammed “ivory tower financial regulators” last week for failing to deal with problems facing London’s capital markets.
Writing on social media platform X, Griffith said: “It’s a scandal and the damage they have done to the City has been tolerated for far too long”.