"Grossly inadequate." "Offensive." "Demonstrate a profound disrespect."
Those are words you often hear hostile-takeover targets use to fight back against their aggressors. This time however, the authors might not have much of a platform to fight from.
As you can tell from the quotes above, Alcon's
The problem is that Alcon's independent shareholders have only a minority stake in the company. Nestle owns 52% of the company, and once Novartis purchases that, it will have 77% of the company under its control. Unlike Cadbury's
In the end, I suspect Novartis will up the offer just to make the problem go away, but investors shouldn't expect the full $180 either. Nestle's premium price is a reward for giving Novartis full control of Alcon.
The only thing minority shareholders can offer is less paperwork if Novartis can fold Alcon's financial reporting into its own. Unfortunately for minority shareholders, that's only worth slightly more than the paper their fighting words are printed on.
Speaking of fighting back, Todd Wenning thinks now is the time to get defensive.