If you don't tender your shares in a tender offer, what happens?

Question

I missed a tender date, I didn't know about it. What happens now? I'd like to believe that the company buying the company I own stock in will simply buy my stock at the tender price. Or.... Did I lose the opportunity to sell, and basicly lost my money?

Answer 1

Since you have not tendered the shares before the record date, you may not be eligible to participate in the buy out scheme now.  You will be having the shares under your account and if a de-listing happens, then the shares would be bought at the specified level.

Answer 2

If the buying company tendered for a certain percentage of your company then you have probably missed the opportunity. It really depends what is actually happening. Is the rump of the shares still listed?

Take the recent example of Pipex. Another company took over the bulk of Pipex and in payment made a tender offer of 10-11p for 58% of shareholdings. If you didn,t tender then you retained all of your shares, which dropped to acouple of pence, I think. They are know called Freedom4 and price about 2p.

But of course each situation is different. I suggest 'phone the company or the registrars and ask them what happened and what your options are now. They won't be able to give advice as to what to do, but atleast you will know what you can do.

Answer 3

You need to check with the company doing the buyout.  You should have received something in the mail from your broker about the tender offer.  Often there is a secondary tender offer if the deal goes through.  If you miss that, you may end up with something that is very hard to trade (not listed on exchanges).

I noticed one of my stocks LIFC had jumped up and flattened off (a sign of a buyout).  I looked at the news and sure enough, it was being bought out (for cash).  I looked back through old mail and filed the tender offer in the nick of time.

Mine was in an IRA, but in a taxable account, any cash in the buyout may have tax consequences (capital gain).