Senator Investment Group LP and Cannae Holdings Inc. have accused CoreLogic of ignoring its shareholders, after the property information and analytics provider said yesterday that it had rejected an unsolicited acquisition offer from the investment firms.
CoreLogic’s Board unanimously rejected an offer to acquire all of its outstanding common shares for $65.00 per share.
It argued that the offer significantly undervalued the company, raised serious regulatory concerns, and was not of value to shareholders.
However, Senator and Cannae have now released their own statement, which claims CoreLogic is in fact acting against the best interests of its shareholders.
“Unfortunately for all shareholders, CoreLogic has rejected our proposal without any sign of seriously considering it,” they said.
Additionally, the firms accused CoreLogic of raising a “smokescreen” of regulatory concerns and using a “poison pill” defence tactic to discourage a takeover bid.
The latter refers to CoreLogic’s decision to increase its share repurchase authorization to $1 billion, which will effectively dilute the 15% ownership interest of Senator and Cannae.
The investors further noted that CoreLogic has been protected from acquisition offers over the past 10 years due to a purchase right that only expired on June 1, 2020.
“We greatly appreciate the widespread support we have heard from shareholders, who rightfully expect the Company to initiate a sales process to maximize value,” Senator and Cannae continued.
“If CoreLogic elects to ignore its shareholders and instead continues with its current course of action, we will call a Special Meeting to replace the Board as early as July 28th.”
The investors went on to attack CoreLogic’s multi-year growth forecast as “wildly optimistic,” and assured that a review had not turned up any regulatory impediments to an acquisition.
For its part, CoreLogic Chairman Paul Folino said the company’ Board was “unanimous in our belief that CoreLogic will be able to deliver significantly more value to shareholders than this opportunistic proposal.”
