re: Ann: Acquisition of shares by Landbridge ... just nowAngela...

re: Ann: Acquisition of shares by Landbridge ... just now




Angela Macdonald-Smith



Chinese port operator Landbridge Group has signalled it has not given up on its $160 million ambition to take over Queensland coal seam gas player WestSide Corporation, buying a 3.2 per cent stake off-market at a discount to its proposed offer price.

The shares are understood to have been acquired from former director and Angus Karoll, who resigned last month. Landbridge, chaired by Asian billionaire Ye Cheng, is thought to have approached other shareholders with a similar offer, without having secured any further stock to date.

Privately-owned Landbridge, which is being advised by PwC, in March announced a conditional intention to make a conditional offer at 36¢ a share. WestSide’s board declared the proposal “manifestly inadequate” and instead sanctioned a major agreement to sell gas from the company’s coal seam gas fields west of Gladstone to Santos’s GLNG venture.

The 20-year gas sales deal effectively voided the takeover approach, which was conditional on WestSide not entering into any new gas sale agreement of longer than six months.

WestSide, which is being advised by Highbury Partnership, had no further word from Landbridge of its intentions, seemingly indicating the Chinese party would not renew its approach. However, the off-market purchase of shares, at 32¢ apiece, has raised expectations it will after all lob an offer by the mid-May date required under Australian takeover regulations, being two months since it announced its intention.

The Queensland company, whose largest shareholder is New Hope Corporation, operates the Meridian SeamGas CSG venture west of Gladstone, in partnership with Mitsui E&P.

The venture’s 680 petajoules of reserves is the largest chunk of gas available in Queensland outside the LNG ventures, although some of that is now committed to GLNG. It previously attracted takeover interest from PetroChina, which made a tentative 52¢ a share approach in late 2012 but withdrew it last May without making an offer.