Sanlam to acquire Merchant Securities for £12.2m

A Sanlam subsidiary, Bidco, has made a cash offer to acquire the entire issued share capital of Merchant. Under the deal, which Sanlam said has been undertaken to facilitate its entry into the UK stockbroking market, Sanlam UK will own 75% of the Bidco-owned shares and Merchant Securities Management the remaining 25%. The conditional offer has been made at a price of 22p for each offer share and represents a premium of approximately 91.3% to the closing Price of 11.5p on 30 August 2011. The deal comes on the back of Sanlam putting in a preliminary offer for Merchant in August after...