• Home
• About/Contact
• Economic Reports
• Research
• Advertising

• Business
• Economics
• Reports
• Finance
• Marketing
• Politics
• Real Estate
• Services
• Retail
• Tech

Subscribe

Steel Partners Japan Proposes Tender Offer for Bull-Dog Sauce Company

US-based buyout/activist fund Steel Partners is staying busy. Late last week they delivered a letter to the management of Bull-Dog Sauce Company stating that the fund intends to acquire all existing shares in Bull-Dog that they do not currently own. Steel Partners is offering ¥1,584 per share, which would be a 20% premium over Bull-Dog’s closing share price a week ago.

Steel Partners, which currently holds 10.15% of Bull-Dog shares, is the company’s largest single investor. Bull-Dog holds about 27% share of Japan’s sauce market, and last year’s profit rose by 24.6 percent.

Let me just say that I love Bull-Dog sauce and I like what Steel Partners is doing in Japan, so this seems like a good match. Of course, the memory of Steel Partners’ unsuccessful bid for Sapporo Breweries is still fresh. In that case, management managed to convince shareholders to fight the acquisition because 1) Steel Partners had no experience running a brewery, or 2) Steel Partners is foreign, or 3) Both.

In his letter to Shoko Ikeda, the President of Bull-Dog, Steel Partners’ Warren Lichtenstein wrote:

Over the years, Steel Partners has been referred to as a “hedge fund.” We prefer to be called and refer to ourselves as a private investment partnership. More recently, we have been labeled “Activists.” In reality, Steel Partners have always been “Relationship/Active Value Investors.” Many so-called “activists” force changes at a company and then sell their entire investment to reap short term gains. That is not Steel Partners’ investment style. Steel Partners has always been and will continue to be a long-term investor, typically holding positions in companies from three to five years or longer.

We’ll be very curious to see what happens with Bull-Dog. At a press conference last week, Senior Managing Director Masaomi Tamiya told reporters, “We think the current management is the most appropriate. We doubt Steel Partners could manage us.”

Bull-Dog currently has no defensive measures in place in order to thwart unsolicited takeover bids, which makes us wonder who could forward as a white knight in this situation?

Comments

Copyright © 2006-2009 Japan Economy News

Privacy Policy | Disclaimer