LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - US plastics group Berry Global has made a cash offer of 793p per share for UK rival RPC Group, giving the company a value of £3.34bn.
RPC directors have withdrawn their recommendation for the earlier takeover offer from private equity group Apollo Capital Management and said they intended to recommend Berry's instead.

Berry's all-cash offer compares to Apollo's 782p-per share offer and is a 16% premium to RPC's closing share price on before its interest was first made public.

The anti-trust requirements are expected to be the same as those required under the Apollo offer and the time to completion is also expected to be similar, Berry said.

Apollo's offer was final so it is unable to respond to Berry's bid.

Analysts at Olivetree Financial said the Berry offer "will obviously come as a small disappointment to the market", with RPC shares trading at 796p at Thursday's close.

"Even though the discussion of the last few weeks was centred around the lack of price tension [...] it will come as a small surprise to see the target flip its recommendation for such a small increment - at the margin Berry is very so slightly less deliverable than Apollo so it had been envisaged that Berry would pay something slightly in excess of 800p."

Olivetree added that it was "hard to see there being any further complications - either positive or negative", with the anti-trust "manageable", with no Chinese approval needed.

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