Selling shares advice.

[TheAngryDog]

I have some shares in KCOM who are currently in the process of selling and going privatised.

The company buying them have made an offer of 97p per share.

My question is, do I have to sell? Or can I hold out for a better offer?

I don't have that many shares and the offer is 34% above what they were worth.

Thanks.

[anonymous-user]

TheAngryDog said:

My question is, do I have to sell? Or can I hold out for a better offer?

Once the buyer has formal acceptances for 95% of the shares they can force the remaining shareholders to sell at the same price. There's really no point doing anything except "accepting the offer now" - unless you think it's a lousy offer and that lots of other people will agree with you...

[TheAngryDog]

rockin said:

TheAngryDog said:

My question is, do I have to sell? Or can I hold out for a better offer?

Once the buyer has formal acceptances for 95% of the shares they can force the remaining shareholders to sell at the same price. There's really no point doing anything except "accepting the offer now" - unless you think it's a lousy offer and that lots of other people will agree with you...

Thanks. If they force the buying of the shares, does it have to be at the original price offered or can they pay less?

The value of the shares are about half the price I paid for them originally.

[TheAngryDog]

I bought when they were listed. 88 shares cost me £200 at the time.

[anonymous-user]

Compulsory purchase is at the "same" price as everyone else's shares, so 97p.

There's absolutely nothing to stop you sitting tight if there's a chance another buyer might outbid the current offer. Either way, you'll eventually get the same price as everyone else.

[anonymous-user]

TheAngryDog said:

I bought when they were listed. 88 shares cost me £200 at the time.

Good grief. It must have all looked very promising for a while, and then the year 2000 "dot com collapse" intervened.

[TheAngryDog]

Thanks for your advice, much appreciated.

Yeah at one point my shares were worth around £1100, but then took a sharp dip. I was hopeful that BT would buy them out eventually or something but it never happened.

[DonkeyApple]

There’s no premium or discount in the market which suggests that absolutely no one is expecting anything other than this transaction.

[TheAngryDog]

DonkeyApple said:

There’s no premium or discount in the market which suggests that absolutely no one is expecting anything other than this transaction.

Cheers. I guess everyone is just going to cut and run and take a loss for the early buyers.