Sanlam in bid to acquire Merchant Securities

In a stock exchange filing, the board of Merchant Securities said it has received a preliminary offer from the firm - which is the UK subsidiary of South African financial services group Sanlam limited - to acquire the entire share capital of the company. Its preliminary approach, which may or may not lead to an offer being made, comes on the back of Sanlam yesterday acquiring a 9.7% stake in Merchant after buying 5,000,000 ordinary shares at a price of 14p per ordinary share. "The preliminary approach has been made subject to a number of pre-conditions including, inter alia, obtainin...