johnharris,Thanks for your comment. You may well be correct that...

johnharris,

Thanks for your comment. You may well be correct that the bidder can't buy stock at greater than 40c without increasing the bid. However, I still think that the announcement period of 17-31 May is not addressed well by the legislation. Even the Section referred to by estseon is ambiguous on this point. It requires that the takeover bid be equal or better than any price paid by the bidder "within the four months before the date of the bid". In this case the date of the bid was 17 May, so does this still apply after 17 May until the offer period starts on 1 June? Although the intention of this Section seems pretty clear, the language implies that it only applies up to the actual bid date. Either way, this is probably a minor point in the bigger picture of what the outcome for ADI will be.