(Adds details on Silchester, effort to seek companies' comment)
By Abhinav Ramnarayan
LONDON, July 27 (Reuters) - WM Morrison's biggest
shareholder, Silchester, is not inclined to support a takeover
offer from private equity firm Fortress Investment Group at
upcoming court and shareholder meetings, it said on Tuesday.
Silchester, which owns a 15.14% stake in the British
supermarket chain, said in a statement there is little in the
recommended offer that could not be achieved by Morrisons as a
listed company.
Fortress and Morrisons did not immediately respond to a
request for comment on the Silchester statement.
Morrisons this month agreed to a takeover led by
SoftBank-owned Fortress Investment Group, which valued
Britain's fourth-largest supermarket chain at 6.3 billion pounds
($8.7 billion) and topped a rival offer from Apollo.
The agreement included a scheme of arrangement with a 75%
hurdle for shareholder acceptance and squeeze out.
London-based investment management company Silchester, which
has been a Morrisons shareholder since 2013, said it considers
such schemes of arrangement disadvantageous to public companies
in general.
"In this particular case, the scheme of arrangement has
enabled the adoption of a short timetable, giving insufficient
opportunity for competing bids to emerge," it said in the
statement, adding it encourages the Morrisons board to allow
more time to respond to other parties who might offer better
value to shareholders.
Private equity firms, many of which are awash with cash,
have been hoovering up British companies in droves, with volumes
at a record high so far this year compared with the same period
in previous years.
John Laing Infrastructure was taken private by KKR this
year, as was UDG Healthcare by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.
(Reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan in London
Additional reporting by Simon Jessop in London
Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Matthew Lewis)
