Greencore Foods gobbles up Uniq for £113m

12th Jul 2011 09:46

Greencore Foods has offered to buy British convenience foods supplier Uniq from a pension fund that owns 90.2% of the company for 96p-a-share, or £113m, sending Uniq's shares soaring 21%.Greencore Foods, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Irish chilled prepared meals maker Greencore Group, is purchasing Uniq for a premium of 62.7% to the opening price on 1 April - the day Uniq was put up for sale. Uniq makes sandwiches for Marks & Spencer, while Greencore supplies retailers like Waitrose, Sainsbury's and Boots.Greencore expects to partially fund this acquisition by a €80.2m rights issue and a new debt facility. Greencore said it "expects the deal to deliver mid-single digit (percentage point) adjusted earnings per share accretion in the financial year to end September 2012 and to be significantly accretive in years thereafter."Shares of UK's Uniq were trading 21.9% higher at 93.3p in London.AR