PrefBlog

BCE has announced:

BCE today announced the company has entered into a final agreement with a company formed by an investor group led by Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investment arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Providence Equity Partners Inc., Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC, and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity.

As a result of the execution of the final agreement, amending the definitive agreement dated June 29, 2007:

• The purchase price will remain $42.75 per common share;
• The Purchaser and the Lenders have delivered fully negotiated and executed credit documents for the purpose of funding the transaction, including an executed credit agreement and other key financing documents;
• The reverse break fee payable by the Purchaser in the circumstances contemplated by the definitive agreement has been increased to $1.2 billion;
• Closing will occur on or before December 11, 2008; and
• Prior to closing, the company will not pay dividends on its common shares but will continue to pay dividends on its preferred shares.

Well, the deal hasn’t closed until the money’s in the bank … but at this point I have to say that a successful closing looks pretty likely. It’s interesting that the break fee increased; presumably, that’s the concession won by BCE in exchange for cancelling the common dividend.

BCE has the following preferred shares outstanding: BCE.PR.A, BCE.PR.C, BCE.PR.D, BCE.PR.E, BCE.PR.F, BCE.PR.G, BCE.PR.H, BCE.PR.I, BCE.PR.R, BCE.PR.S, BCE.PR.T, BCE.PR.Y & BCE.PR.Z

The last dedicated PrefBlog entry in this saga was BCE / Teachers’ Deal : Chattering Classes Humiliated

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Issue Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.