AXA Asia Pacific Rejects APH Takeover Bid

One of the leading players of the insurance, retirement funds, investment funds and individual savings plans industry AXA Asia Pacific Holdings (AXA), have declined an $11 billion takeover bid which was submitted by its rival AMP. However Rick Allert, the chairman of AXA Asia Pacific didn’t completely close down his door for the bidder saying that his side is looking forward for a better deal from AMP. The company declined the unsolicited and conditional scheme offer which was delivered to AXA SA. The bid included AMP’s offer of purchasing all the shares in AXA APH which includes the controlling stake of AXA SA and sell back the Asian assets of AXA APH to AXA SA. It is to be mentioned that AXA SA is the owner of 53 percent of AXA Asia Pacific. In 2004, it took an attempt to takeover AXA Asia Pacific which was rejected by the Australia based company.

The AMP authority claimed that the proposal submitted to AXA Asia Pacific Holdings would provide a $120 million worth of after-tax net synergy benefits to the shareholders. Mr. Allert stated that he was positive about the assessment regarding the synergy benefits. However, he also made it very clear that AMP needs to come up with a better price. It is believed that the two sides can emerge as the largest financial adviser network in the industry which might pose a major challenge to the big banks. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) spokeswoman Brent Rebecca stated today that the commission will be reviewing the proposal and a dateline will be fixed once it receives a written submission.

The shares of AXA Asia Pacific went high when the company resumed trading in the stock exchange and closed at $5.70, up 33 percent. On the other hand, AMP shares closed the trading session at $6.12 with a 4.3 percent gain.