The takeover that’s the talk of London
The £10.6bn showdown between EQT and Intertek is pitting top UK rainmakers against each other
Top UK rainmakers battle over EQT and Intertek
The £10.6bn showdown between buyout group EQT and FTSE 100 testing company Intertek is pitting some of the UK’s top rainmakers against each other.
Anthony Zammit and Hugh Moran are among the Morgan Stanley bankers advising EQT on its full-court press to break the board’s resistance.
On the other side of the table, Intertek has corralled some of the city’s top defence advisers including Goldman Sachs’ Anthony Gutman and Khamran Ali, alongside JPMorgan Chase veteran Dwayne Lysaght.
Many of these bankers have faced off on contentious UK take-privates before.
Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan competed with separate buyout vehicles in the high-profile £4.1bn bidding war for Spectris last year. Defence advisers Goldman and Rothschild helped the British maker of high-tech instruments fetch an astounding premium of more than 100 per cent.
Zammit has steered EQT through deals before, securing the takeover of UK animal health provider Dechra Pharmaceuticals in 2024 even after cutting its offer price.
In the current face-off, EQT has successfully ratcheted up shareholder pressure by declaring its fourth offer of £60 per share as final, meaning that the deal lives or dies at £10.6bn including debt.
Investors including Palliser Capital and Matt Peltz, son of activist investor Nelson Peltz, are pushing Intertek’s board to reach a deal.
And several shareholders have gone to Intertek chair Andrew Martin to plead their case for a takeover, bypassing CEO André Lacroix, who has led the company for more than a decade and dug his heels in.
Investor PrimeStone Capital called on Lacroix and the board to deliver an “attractive windfall for shareholders, cementing a positive legacy”. If Intertek succumbs in the end, the London Stock Exchange will see another UK plc disappear from the market after disappointing share performance made it vulnerable to a buyout.