When bidding for property, it’s important not to take no for an answer. Australia’s REA Group is taking this advice seriously, and has just launched its third offer to buy UK housing portal Rightmove.
After being rebuffed twice this month, REA has upped its offer again. It is now proposing to pay around £6.1bn for the UK’s biggest online property portal.
REA’s offer is worth 770p per Rightmove share – structured as 341p in cash and 0.0422 new REA shares.
In a statement to the Australia stock market this morning, Owen Wilson, CEO of REA, insisted the deal made sense, saying:“We believe that the combination of our world-leading expertise and technology with the attractive Rightmove business will create an enhanced experience for agents, buyers and sellers of property.
"We live in a world of intensifying competition and this proposed transaction would bring together two highly complementary digital property businesses for investment and growth."
Wilson added that REA is “genuinely disappointed at the lack of engagement by Rightmove’s board”.
REA, which is majority owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, made its first approach to Rightmove on 5 September, when it proposed paying 705p per share, or £5.6bn. That was rebuffed, with Rightmove’s board saying it “fundamentally” undervalued the company.
Then on Friday night, news broke that REA had increased its offer by £300m.
Rightmove weren’t commenting officially on that offer yesterday, but Bloomberg reported that “people familiar with the matter’” said it had been rejected.
Now, Rightmove’s board must ponder this third offer.The company’s shares closed at 674p on Friday night (before news of the second offer broke), which values Rightmove at £5.32bn.
Also coming up today Surveys of purchasing managers across the UK, Eurozone and the US will show how major economies are faring this month.
And in Liverpool, chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to promise “a budget to rebuild Britain” in her speech to the Labour party conference today. The agenda • 9am BST: Purchasing managers index (flash reading) for the eurozone in September • 9.30am BST: Purchasing managers index (flash reading) for the UK in September • 11am BST: CBI industrial trends report on UK factories • 2.45pm BST: Purchasing managers' index (flash reading) for the US in September We’ll be tracking all the main events throughout the day ...
You are receiving this email because you are a subscriber to Business Today. Guardian News & Media Limited - a member of Guardian Media Group PLC. Registered Office: Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU. Registered in England No. 908396
Labour should ditch doom and gloom message for one of economic renewal 
