On Monday morning, Bausch & Lomb agreed to allow rival Advanced Medical Optics Inc. to provide certain
information about its $4.23 billion takeover offer to some of AMO's large shareholders.
This came in reply to Friday's letter from AMO, which offered several proposals to make their rival bid more appealing than the $3.5 billion, $65 per share, cash take-private agreement with Warburg Pincus. On Friday, AMO offerred to have its shareholders vote on the proposed deal before
Bausch & Lomb investors weigh the Warburg Pincus offer. Advanced Medical also offered to pay a $50 million reverse termination fee if its investors voted against the deal.
Advanced Medical's offer has been opposed by its third-largest shareholder, ValueAct Capital. And as The Deal's Scott Stuart writes in today's Arbitrage column, arbs think ValueAct is not alone in its opposition.
Among the details AMO wants to be free to discuss is its plan for potential divestitures as well as the deal's potential positive boost to earnings.
Bausch & Lomb asked Advanced Medical to provide "concrete, credible evidence" of its ability to secure approval from its stockholders no later than 12 p.m. Aug 3 - Tom Groppe
See today's Arbitrage column on TheDeal.com
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Based on this latest news, AMO may still have a chance at B&L, but I think WP may still have the advantage. Some of the ties between B&L and WP execs are pretty strong, which may be a lot of why AMO seems to be having such a hard time. (NewsVisual has an article referring to some of these connections: http://www.newsvisual.com/newsvisual/2007/07/bausch-lomb-tak.html )