The bank, the hostile bid and acerbic Alistair
Looking over today's coverage of the Pollent Street Capital / BC Partners bid for Shawbrook I was somewhat dismayed that none of the mainstream business sections picked up on the fact that the private equity firms had actually gone "hostile" on challenger bank by taking their offer directly to shareholders.
In part, this is because I spent the whole of last week trying to stack up a story about how Pollen Street Capital and BC Partners were planning to go hostile on Shawbrook but for reasons I can't explain on here "people close to the situation" sucessfully suppresed that story. And at first it appeared these "people close to the situation" had managed to do the same yesterday despite the public announcements from BC Partners/Pollen Street Capital and Shawbrook.
But when I picked up a copy of today's The Times and read Alistair Osborne's comment column I was extremely pleased to see that this former colleague of mine from The Daily Telegraph had worked out that "people close to the situation" were spouting utter codswallop. He called out the private equity consortium's bid for exactly what it is: a hostile takeover attempt. In case you missed it, here is a link to today's column by Alistair:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/friend-with-not-many-benefits-869fjssr5
Hat tip to that this veteran business commentator, hack (in his days as a reporter Alistair dug up his fair share of scoops, including one in 2006 about how Goldman Sachs made a hostile takeoer bid for ITV) and wind up merchant!..