Concert parties

By THIS IS MONEY
Updated:

 

The Daily Mail City team explains 'concert parties', where investors secretly agree to purchase shares separately in a company, which they plan to combine later.

A big knees up?

No, it has nothing to do with the aftershow antics of Oasis. Far more boring, I'm afraid.

It is when a number of investors secretly agree to purchase shares separately in a particular company, which they plan to amalgamate later into a single holding.

It allows the dissident investors to exert more pressure than they would on their own. In some countries acting in concert is deemed illegal.

What are the rules?

The most important rule here in Britain is the 30% threshold. It is policed by the Takeover Panel, which has decreed that investors acting together or in 'concert', as it is called, must launch a mandatory bid for a company, or seek a get-out clause, if they collectively amass a stake of 30% or more.

Why do we care?

All Bar One and Harvester owner Mitchells & Butlers is having a bit of local difficulty. It wants to know whether Bahamian billionaire Joe Lewis is working secretly with Irish horseracing tycoons John Magnier and JP McManus to take control of the pubs group. It has called in the takeover panel to make a ruling.

In the meantime there have been ructions over the appointment of a new chairman at M&B, with three candidates for the job vetoed by Lewis and his board appointees.

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