The course of the software specialist recently jumped 94.10 percent to 520 pence on the London Stock Exchange. Canadian company Open Text is willing to pay 532 pence per share. Micro Focus is backing the bid with a price almost double the previous day’s closing price of 268 pence.
With the takeover, which values the target at £5.1 billion, the next round of bids for a British tech company was heralded within a few days: On Wednesday it became known that the French electrical engineering group Schneider Electric was considering a complete takeover of the software group AVEVA.
According to the market, the favorable exchange rate of the British pound is currently enticing, making European companies particularly attractive to North American prospects. “With the pound now at bargain levels, we are seeing appetite for takeovers increasing,” said Scope Markets analyst James Hughes. This signals some optimism about the longer-term prospects for UK corporations and the idea that investors are becoming a bit more risk-averse.
One man’s joy, the other’s sorrow: After the shares of Open Text closed at 48.14 Canadian dollars the previous evening in Toronto, they are now under considerable pressure. On Friday, the discount was 14.44 percent to 31.89 Canadian dollars.
In the broader software industry, the consolidation fantasy initially considered possible by stockbrokers partially fizzled out: The shares of the large German software companies developed differently. The titles of SAP had recently slipped into the red at 0.6 percent, while those of Software AG remained slightly up at almost half a percent.
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