Seven Group Holdings chips off Boral stake; UBS on ticket

afr.com:

Kerry Stokes’ Seven Group Holdings had UBS’s equities desk rounding up buyers for an up to 3 per cent slice of Boral Limited after market close on Tuesday.

Ryan Stokes chairs Boral’s board.  Louie Douvis

UBS was offering Boral shares at $4.90 apiece or a 2.6 per cent discount to the last close. It had instructions to sell at least $54 million, going up to $162 million on Seven’s behalf.

It’s a decent sized trade, representing 1 per cent to 3 per cent of Boral’s total shares on issue. Post completion, Seven should have 70 per cent to 72 per cent of Boral and “no current intention” to sell further, according to a term sheet seen by Street Talk.

Fund managers were told to have their bids in by 8:30pm and to expect allocations by Wednesday morning.

An update sent to investors later in the evening said UBS had fixed the offer size at 11.1 million shares or about 1 per cent of the company.

Boral attracted a $7.40 hostile off-market takeover bid from Seven in mid-2021. Despite Boral board’s resistance, Seven walked away with nearly 69.6 per cent of the construction products business, and followed up with a 3 per cent creep last year.