Pepper teams up with Cadence for another crack at RHG
Pepper Australia has entered into partnership with Cadence Capital, an RHG shareholder, to make another bid for RHG.On Friday, the consortium announced that it had offered an estimated 49.65 cents a share for RHG, made up of a 35 cents a share cash component and one fully paid share in Cadence Capital for every 10 ordinary shares in RHG.Cadence would pay RHG shareholders who received Cadence shares under the proposed scheme of arrangement a fully franked dividend of five cents per Cadence share.Early last month the RHG board recommended that shareholders accept an offer of 44.1 cents a share from a syndicate led by the lender Resimac. Pepper launched a competing bid and Resimac revised its offer to 48 cents a share.Under the Resimac proposal, RHG will pay a fully franked dividend of three cents a share. Under Pepper's proposal, any dividend paid by RHG would reduce the amount that Pepper would pay.RHG's closing price in the week before the initial Resimac bid was 40 cents a share. The initial offer price (plus dividend) exceeded RHG's highest share price over the past two years.Cadence Capital and its associates own 17.1 per cent of RHG.On Friday, RHG's directors issued a statement saying they were assessing the Pepper proposal.