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Hedge fund bids to derail Chinese pork firm’s deal
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Activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP is working with investors interested in paying “substantially” more for Smithfield Foods Inc than the price China’s Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd had agreed to.
Starboard, a New York-based fund that holds a 5.7 percent stake in Smithfield, said in a letter to the company’s shareholders on Tuesday that it had received “nonbinding written indications of interest” from other parties willing to pay above the US$34 per share cash deal proposed by Shuanghui.
While the counter-proposal was not completed, the hedge fund said it planned to vote against the Smithfield-Shuanghui merger later this month in order to buy more time to get such a bid finalized.
Virginia-based Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer, has set a special shareholder meeting on September 24 to vote on the proposed acquisition by Shuanghui. The deal, struck in May and valued then at about US$7.1 billion including debt, would be the biggest takeover of a US company by a Chinese firm.
The US government said in late July that it would take a further 45 days to review Shuanghui’s plan to purchase Smithfield.
Starboard, which has argued that Smithfield could be sold for more if its assets were split, said in July that it had hired Moelis & Co and BDA Advisors Inc to advise the hedge fund as it searched for buyout firms to form a rival bid. Starboard had approached investment firm Blackstone Group LP and other meat processors, including Tyson Foods Inc, according to an August 9 report by Bloomberg News.
While the portent of a US-based group of owners may appeal to critics of a Chinese takeover, some industry analysts say it could be challenging to derail the Shuanghui-Smithfield deal at this point.
Shuanghui International Holdings Inc said in a statement on Tuesday that it has secured about US$4 billion in loans from a group of eight banks as part of the financing it needs to fund the Smithfield deal. The news prompted D.A. Davidson & Co analyst Timothy S. Ramey to write in a research note that “the acquisition of Smithfield by Shuanghui International Holdings looks reasonably certain.”
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