While the world was watching the ping-pong match between Dell (NASDAQ:
DELL
) and Hewlett Packard (NYSE:
HPQ
) on 3par (NYSE:
PAR
) (HP finally won), many other M&A deals were heating up under the radar. Take the example of
Casey's General store
(NASDAQ:
CASY
). Casey, a convenience store operator in the mid-west, first received an offer from Couche-Tard, the largest convenience store operator in Canada for $36/share on April 9, 2010. The action turned ugly pretty quickly as Casey alleged and sued Couche-Tard on
dumping its share immediately after it made its offer
, thus depressed Casey's share price so Casey could be acquired cheaply. Couche-Tard subsequently raised its acquisition price a few times, the
latest on September 1st to $38.5/share
. This latest bid did not last long, as Casey now says that there's
another bid at $40/share for the company
. With more than one buyer in the picture, Casey's share shot up to $42.76, now trading at a premium of 6.9% to the latest offer price by the unidentified buyer. If indeed a bidding war ensues, similar to the one between Dell and HP, Casey's share can continue to go higher. Another M&A deal, one between BHP Billiton (NYSE:
BHP
) and Potash (NYSE:
POT
) is going through a similar path. Potash rejected the latest offer of $130/share by BHP, and is now entertaining different buyers, including a
rumor bid concerning Singapore's state investment company, Temasek Holdings, and Sincochem of China
. Potash is now trading at 15% premium to BHP's offer price. A look at
10xreturn's M&A stock center
reveals that quite a few potential M&A deals are trading at premiums. One of the interesting one is
Dynergy Inc.
(NYSE:
DYN
), with an offer of $4.5 from The Blackstone Group (NYSE:
BX
), but is currently trading at $4.86/share. With the share trading at 8% premium to its Blackstone's offer, there's definitely speculation that another bid may come along.
Daniel Ho is the founder of 10xreturn.com, a financial portal providing financial information and market statistics for investment professionals.
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