Crude oil tanker company DHT Holdings rejected on Sunday a fifth takeover proposal from shipping tycoon John Fredriksen's Frontline.
A statement from DHT Holdings said that its Board of Directors has unanimously rejected Frontline April 25 proposal to acquire all of the outstanding shares of common stock of DHT at a ratio of 0.8 Frontline shares for each DHT share.
"This is, of course, the exact same proposal you made at the end of February. We unanimously rejected that proposal, determining it significantly undervalued the contribution that DHT's business would make to a combined company," said the statement.
"But charter rates, asset values and other conditions are changing constantly in our industry, and DHT's fleet has evolved significantly since your February proposal. As a Board, we will always remain open to exploring alternatives that, relative to our current strategy, could provide superior value to our shareholders, including a proposed takeover.
Taking this all into account, with the assistance of DHT management, our financial adviser, Lazard, and our legal counsel, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, we thoroughly and carefully reviewed your proposal with an open mind and fresh outlook.
Following that review, we have unanimously concluded that your proposal continues to be wholly inadequate for DHT and its shareholders.
We reject your proposal for a wide array of reasons-some perhaps even more compelling to us now than they were this past February. We would like to detail a few that should help you come to appreciate, quite frankly, just how far off the mark you are.
Our hope is that-with a better understanding of the total inadequacy of your offer-we can all turn our focus to areas more productive for our respective businesses. For our part, we have instructed our management team to focus on its full-time job of running a great shipping company, for the benefit of our shareholders.
The bottom line is that Frontline's proposed takeover of DHT is so woefully inadequate that we do not believe further engagement will result in a fair offer for the DHT franchise."
