Santos rejects private equity takeover offer

On 22 October, Santos announced that its board had rejected a takeover offer from Scepter Partners, a private equity company with backing from investors in Asia and the Middle East. The A$6.88/share offer was a 26% premium to the previous day’s closing price and valued Santos at an enterprise value of A$15.5 billion (US$11.2 billion). This is the third multi-billion-dollar corporate takeover bid in the last two months that has been rejected as opportunistic and undervalued. The spread between between potential buyers' and sellers' deal pricing expectations has been responsible for a collapse in deal flow over the last year. This latest rejection is evidence that the gap remains wide.