ASX minnow, Selfwealth (ASX: SWF) breathed some rare air this afternoon with the share trading services business up around 4% following revelations that a fourth suitor has thrown an additional bid into the ring to acquire the company.
Last month Bell Financial Group (ASX: BFG) made a $0.25 per share offer for SelfWealth to add scale to the group’s online broking business, growth, and cost synergies.
Bell’s offer follows a 23¢ bid made last November by AxiCorp Financial Services which followed an opportunistic 17.5¢ a share bid by Stake after the share price continued to bounce lower during 2023.
Bell has been hell bent on growing its book after launching an unsuccessful bid to merge with E&P Financial (née Evans Dixon) last year.
Meanwhile, Bell has told shareholders - who vote on the deal next month - that spending $57.7 million on Selfwealth would increase its active portfolios by 130,000 and add $11 billion to the existing $94 billion in its online broking business.
Syfe bid follows blocking trade last Friday
Fast forward four weeks and Singapore-based Svava Pte Ltd, which owns the Syfe platform in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia has upped the ante by lobbing in a counter (all-cash scheme) bid at 28¢ per share. Syfe’s offer is a 12% premium to Bell Financial's November 2024 offer and values Selfwealth at around $65 million.
In a tactical move that could potentially blow Bell’s bid out of the water, Syfe acquired close to the maximum permissible 19.99% of the company’s stock on Friday at 28¢ per share.
To attempt to demonstrate that they’re playing games, Syfe is seeking due diligence to make the indicative offer non-binding.
Assuming Syfe’s 28c offer is successful, shareholders will end up with a 133.3% premium to the undisturbed share price. A successful takeover of Selfwealth would not be Syfe’s first foray into Australia, with the Singapore operator launching a “holistic platform” for customers mid-2022 to invest in US stocks, ETFs and crypto.
Bell is still in the race
Today’s counterbid by Syfe appears to have blindsided an offer updated by Bell this morning. However, Selfwealth’s board (at the time of writing) remain wedded to Bell Financials’ latest offer of 25c per share.
“The Selfwealth board continues to unanimously recommend that Selfwealth shareholders vote in favour of the Bell offer, in the absence of a superior proposal as defined in the Bell SID (scheme implementation deed) and subject to an independent expert concluding (and continuing to conclude) that the Bell offer is in the best interests of Selfwealth shareholders,” the company said today.
Nevertheless, in what appears to be some gamesmanship, Selfwealth is allowing the Syfe owner to engage further to establish if its proposal is likely to be more favourable to shareholders.
Meantime, while there’s no guarantee Syfe’s proposal will result in a binding transaction, the company is calling for Selfwealth to trash the Bell takeover proposal and offer it an exclusivity arrangement ahead of a potential binding implementation deed being put forward.
Watch out for bid details to be announced on the ASX on Monday morning.