Hugh Osmond will contact Six Continents today to try to set up a meeting to discuss the proposed bid for the hotels and pubs group by his company Capital Management and Investment (CMI), the Financial Times says.
Osmond is believed to want to make a bid before SixC holds a shareholders' meeting on March 12 to aprove splitting the group into two separate companies, Intercontinental, which will run the hotels side, and Mitchells & Butlers, which will run the pubs and restaurants side.
His bid is expected to be worth around 650p a share in cash and shares in CMI, a total of £5.6bn, against SixC's closing price on Friday of 625p, up 9p. He is also likely to offer to return around £1.2bn to SixC shareholders, nearly twice as much as SixC is offering as part of its demerger package. Osmond has apparently secured financial backing from investment banks Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston.
However, it is expected that SixC's chief executive, Sir Ian Prosser, and its financial director, Richard North, will reject Osmond's overtures. In that case, Osmond has said, he will make a hostile bid for the group, with most observers expecting that to happen before the end of this week.
A bidding war of the kind that followed Morrison's approach for its rival supermarket chain Safeway is seen as unlikely by many commentators, though the American private equity groups Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Blackstone are said to be prepared to try a "white knight' bid for SixC is CMI does go hostile.
Hilton Group has confirmed it has hired Deutsche Bank UBS Warburg to advise on its options over Six Continents. However, Hilton and other possible buyers of SixC's hotels, such as Marriott and Starwood of the United States, are likely to wait to see if CMI wins any battle with its target before approaching Osmond directly with an offer for chains such as Intercontinental, Crown Plaza and Holiday Inn.
The SixC hotel owners' association warned that franchisees would "consider terminating licence agreements", if the hotels were broken up.
Meanwhile both CMI and SixC have suffered embarrassments in the preliminary jostlings. It was revealed an "exploding warrants" options package at CMI would give Osmond and some of his associates hundreds of millions of pounds if the company issued more stock to help it acquire SixC. Anonymous CMI figures quickly insisted the warrants deal had been left in place by accident, and would never now be executed. On the same day SixC had to redraft a statement saying it had outperformed the FTSE 100 over one, two, three, five and 10 years when it turned out the 10-year figure had been miscalculated.
Osmond is believed to want to make a bid before SixC holds a shareholders' meeting on March 12 to aprove splitting the group into two separate companies, Intercontinental, which will run the hotels side, and Mitchells & Butlers, which will run the pubs and restaurants side.
His bid is expected to be worth around 650p a share in cash and shares in CMI, a total of £5.6bn, against SixC's closing price on Friday of 625p, up 9p. He is also likely to offer to return around £1.2bn to SixC shareholders, nearly twice as much as SixC is offering as part of its demerger package. Osmond has apparently secured financial backing from investment banks Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse First Boston.
However, it is expected that SixC's chief executive, Sir Ian Prosser, and its financial director, Richard North, will reject Osmond's overtures. In that case, Osmond has said, he will make a hostile bid for the group, with most observers expecting that to happen before the end of this week.
A bidding war of the kind that followed Morrison's approach for its rival supermarket chain Safeway is seen as unlikely by many commentators, though the American private equity groups Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Blackstone are said to be prepared to try a "white knight' bid for SixC is CMI does go hostile.
Hilton Group has confirmed it has hired Deutsche Bank UBS Warburg to advise on its options over Six Continents. However, Hilton and other possible buyers of SixC's hotels, such as Marriott and Starwood of the United States, are likely to wait to see if CMI wins any battle with its target before approaching Osmond directly with an offer for chains such as Intercontinental, Crown Plaza and Holiday Inn.
The SixC hotel owners' association warned that franchisees would "consider terminating licence agreements", if the hotels were broken up.
Meanwhile both CMI and SixC have suffered embarrassments in the preliminary jostlings. It was revealed an "exploding warrants" options package at CMI would give Osmond and some of his associates hundreds of millions of pounds if the company issued more stock to help it acquire SixC. Anonymous CMI figures quickly insisted the warrants deal had been left in place by accident, and would never now be executed. On the same day SixC had to redraft a statement saying it had outperformed the FTSE 100 over one, two, three, five and 10 years when it turned out the 10-year figure had been miscalculated.
