Alent (ALNT) has agreed to a bumper £1.35bn takeover from one of the US's most acquisitive corporate raiders, in a deal that values ita shares at 503p each - a whopping 49 per cent premium to their closing price just before the bid. The offer from Platform Specialty Products sent shares in the group - which manufactures chemicals used to coat parts for cars and phones before assembly - up 45 per cent to 489p.
Platform, which was established in 2013 as a vehicle to buy specialty chemicals companies, will integrate Alent into its MacDermid division. Management hopes the combined business can comfortably compete with French oil group Total, the market leader in surface chemicals. It also expects to generate $50m (£32.1m) in annual pre-tax cost savings from the deal.
The bid has received the blessing of Alent's largest shareholder - activist investor Cevian Capital - and comes less than three years after the Cookson demerger. But approval is still required from international competition regulators, including the notoriously slow China Ministry of Commerce and Brazil's CADE.
