News

June 18, 2009

It Looks Like There Might Be A Bidding War For EcoSecurities On The Horizon

By Rue Swabey

In the space of a week Aim-listed carbon trader EcoSecurities has received and rejected two bids. The first bid, on June 5th, came from EcoSecurities’ co-founder and former chief executive, Dr Pedro Moura Costa, who offered 60p a share - equivalent to a 32 per cent premium to the previous day’s close. The second offer came from EDF Trading, a subsidiary of the French energy group, and was a more generous 75p per share.

The stock price has jumped 77 per cent to 80p. The board has rejected both offers and advised shareholders to take no action. Agustin Hochschild, alternative energy equity analyst at Mirabaud Securities, sees EcoSecurities as an attractive take-over target but believes that it can achieve a higher valuation. He calculates a “bare bones” valuation of 121p a share based on EcoSecurities’ portfolio of 34 million tonnes of registered Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), 6.8 million tonnes of...