So, just a day after Bill Ackman claims CVS’ (CVS) offer for Longs Drugs (LDG) is too low and that he “has other interested parties”, they begin to emerge.
The WSJ Reports:
Walgreens said it would pay $75 a share in cash to buy the California-based Longs, besting CVS’s price of $71.50 per share, also in cash, which was equivalent to about $2.7 billion. Either deal would also include the assumption of about $200 million in debt.
Walgreens CEO Jeffrey Rein said in a letter to Longs’ board of directors that the company would prefer to negotiate with Longs directly but was also prepared to take the offer directly to the company’s shareholders.
Rein also noted in the letter, which Walgreens disclosed in a press release late Friday, that Walgreens had expressed an interest in acquiring Longs earlier for $70 a share but never received due diligence materials from the company.
What annoys me the most is that I was actually going to do the “Ackman Longs Trade” discuss Thursday on Monday, it would have been a nice 4.5% in a day….would have been..
Like I have said here countless times, timing is indeed everything and I missed out on this one.
Disclosure (“none” means no position):
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