BAF To BCE Preferred Share Exchange To Proceed

BCE Inc. has announced:

the successful completion of the initial phase of BCE’s offers to purchase all outstanding Bell Aliant publicly held common shares and to exchange all outstanding Bell Aliant preferred shares.

CST Trust Company, the depository for the offers, reported that, as of 5:00 pm Eastern on September 19, 2014, a total of 103,486,954 Bell Aliant common shares, representing approximately 81.2% of the outstanding publicly held common shares, had been validly tendered to BCE’s offer and not withdrawn. BCE has taken up and expects to pay for such shares on September 24, 2014, at which time pro-ration information related to the cash and share alternatives will be available at BCE.ca/Investors/shareholder-info/bell-aliant-privatization.

As all conditions of the common share offer have been satisfied, and all regulatory approvals have been received, BCE’s privatization of Bell Aliant is expected to close on or about October 31, 2014.

CST Trust Company also reported that, as of 5:00 pm Eastern on September 19, 2014, a total of 18,388,857 preferred shares of Bell Aliant Preferred Equity Inc. (TSX: BAF) (Prefco), representing approximately 72.7% of the outstanding preferred shares, had been validly tendered to BCE’s offer and not withdrawn. As all conditions of the preferred share offer have been satisfied, the BCE preferred shares exchanged for tendered Prefco preferred shares are expected to be issued on September 24, 2014 and to commence trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange at the open of trading on the next day.

BCE also intends to effect, and will hold sufficient votes to approve (at a meeting of Prefco shareholders to be held on October 31, 2014), a subsequent acquisition transaction to acquire the remaining preferred shares.

Update, 2014-9-25 : Last quoted line added to post 2014-9-25

As discussed on PrefBlog when the offer was announced:

Affected issues are:

These issues will be nicely complementary to BCE.PR.K, A FixedReset, 4.15%+188, which commenced trading July 5, 2011 with a ridiculous re-opening 2011-12-12.

I don’t have the new tickers yet, but I’ll report ’em when I got ’em.

Implied volatility of the series shows an extraordinarily good fit:

ImpVol_BCE_140919
Click for Big

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