Star fund manager Neil Woodford looks set to make an early coup as one of his first investments, the business telecoms group Daisy, revealed it has received a £500 million bid to take it private.
Daisy chief executive and founder Matthew Riley has teamed up with Martin Hughes’s Toscafund, which is the firm’s largest shareholder, with a proposed 190p-a-share offer.
Daisy shares, which have been as low as 137p at the end of June and as high as 191.5p in March, rose 11.5p to 186.5p on the news.
Woodford declared a near-4% stake in May when the price was around 170p. His former fund Invesco Perpetual is Daisy’s third-biggest shareholder with a 22% stake.
Riley (23%) and Toscafund (28.5%) control just over 51% of Daisy’s shares. They have not yet been ruled to be acting in concert and have a deadline of September 10 to make a formal bid.
Things are made more complicated by the fact that the bid approach is being assessed by an independent committee of non-executive directors of Daisy, headed by its executive chairman Peter Dubens.
He is the founder of private-equity firm Oakley Capital, which initially backed Woodford in setting up after his breakaway from Invesco this year.
Daisy joined the stock market in 2009 by reversing into Dubens’ own telecoms venture Freedom4.
