EcoSecurities’ founder makes bid official
29 July, 2009
Pedro Moura Costa, former president and a co-founder of carbon aggregator EcoSecurities, formally made an offer to take over his old firm last week, six weeks after announcing his intentions.
Moura Costa, through Guanabara
Holdings – a company he established through one of his family trusts, the
Mayanna Trust, with BTG Carbon Luxembourg – last week sent offer documents to
the London-listed company’s shareholders, detailing his £0.77
($1.27) per share cash offer. The offer represents “a significant premium
of 69.2% to the closing price of 45.5 pence per share on 4 June 2009”, the
day before Guanabara announced it was mulling an offer, Guanabara said.
EcoSecurities’ board said it will respond in detail to the offer
by 5 August, and repeated its view that the offer is “wholly
inadequate”. The company’s shares have hovered around £0.88 in
the past week.
Announcing that the offer had been made, Guanabara said that it “is of the view that EcoSecurities suffers from the combined effects of the economic recession, a general decline in stock markets, and continuing uncertainties around the policies affecting carbon markets”. It added that the company “is better managed under a leaner and more streamlined corporate governance structure that this offer, if successful, would help deliver”.
Guanabara also noted that around 65% of EcoSecurities’ pre-2012 carbon credit portfolio is not pre-sold, leaving the firm “overly dependent” on future prices. Former bidding rival EdF Trading has signed an agreement with Guanabara to buy pre-2012 credits if the bid is successful.
A rival bid from Swedish project developer Tricorona, which last week said it was considering an offer, has yet to materialise.
Moura Costa stood down as president at the end of April to pursue other interests. In a statement at the time, he said: “I believe that EcoSecurities is a unique company doing exceptional work in an extremely promising and important sector ... I believe in the long-term success of EcoSecurities.”
