Some interesting questions. I must confess I haven't seen any evidence of directors "who have gone off and appeared to have done a deal". Harbour is wooing Hony and ENN very enthusiastically. And ENN have a director on the board. It would be seriously unethical for any director to do deals in their personal interests against the interests of other shareholders.
I suspect that the extra 5% roll-over has been dropped because everybody realises it would be impossible to honour without spending years and millions in court defending allegations of improper conduct in determining who else gets into that equity.
Harbour know that allowing Hony and ENN to retain an interest in Santos after the takeover is the only way they can get their support. Hony and ENN stand to benefit enormously from their strategic partnership with Santos and they would never agree to a takeover that cut them off from those benefits. But it looks to me like Harbour over-stepped the mark when they made their "Substantial Holder" announcement yesterday, claiming that they had an agreement with ENN and Hony to act as an association. Hony and ENN might be telling Harbour in private that they would be prepared to do that (and hence break the strategic partnership) if the board were to recommend against the takeover. But I can't imagine for a moment that they intended it to be made so spectacularly public as it was yesterday! I bet they were appalled! Perhaps Harbour was trying to force their hand, break the alliance, and send a message to the board that they could no longer rely on Hony's and ENN's support.
For their part Hony and ENN will want to keep Santos on-side and maintain the strategic partnership in the event that the takeover doesn't happen. So they will be telling Santos all the nice things like, "we have no intention of breaking our strategic alliance". That is why ENN's chairman endorsed this morning's announcement.
It would seem that Harbour has succeeded in forcing ENN's hand, but ENN has gone the other way instead by reasserting solidarity with the board.
This is better than Netflix at the moment!!
Time-scale is an important part of share price. You might buy a share for $6.45 if you had confidence you'd be paid out $6.50 for it in the near future. You'd pay less if it were going to take a long time to get your $6.50, and less again if there was a good chance that the deal wouldn't happen at all and you'd be left carrying or selling your share at a loss.
Keep in mind that Santos shares were trading at just over $5 before the bid. All else being equal it would be reasonable to expect that the share price would return to that level if the bid were to be withdrawn. But all else is not equal with the strong upward movement in oil prices, so I would expect the underlying price to have higher support than that. Still the possibility of the deal coming to nothing and the share price dropping will weigh heavily on the buy offers at present.
Similarly, it's time-scale at play when people are saying they want $7 or $10 for their Santos shares. The take-over will effectively deny us all future growth and dividends from our Santos shares. So if you want my shares now you'll have to pay me now for those future profits.
STO Price at posting:
$6.20 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
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