“This means Bayer must make a new offer to all Schering stockholders to acquire the shares they still own because Bayer now holds more than 30% of Schering stock, purchased at prices of up to E88 per share,” Bayer said in a statement.
The new offer that Bayer is now preparing will have to be at the increased price of E88 per share after the company bought some shares at that price outside of the takeover deal.
According to German law, Bayer will have to pay the highest price at which it purchased shares to all Schering stockholders who have accepted the takeover offer by the end of the acceptance period.
Under the current bid of E86 per share Bayer has until midnight on June 14th to acquire 75% of the shares in Schering in order to complete the acquisition. However, it now seems unlikely that the company will be successful with this bid after rival Merck KGaA acquired 2.1 million Schering shares to bring its stake in the company to 21.8%.
Merck KGaA made an initial takeover bid for Schering of E77 per share in March but was then muscled out of the running for the company by Bayer’s E86 per share bid.
Bayer has also said that it is bringing legal action against Merck claiming that Merck did not publicly announce its recent purchase of Schering shares.
“The road has gotten rougher, but we’re not losing sight of the clear aim we set ourselves: our plan is to combine our pharmaceutical activities with those of Schering to form a world-class German pharmaceutical company,” said Bayer management board chairman Werner Wenning.