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June 22, 2006

MediaRing Ups Offer

By Cindy Waxer
TMCnet Contributing Editor


As part of a publicly declared “final offer,” MediaRing, a VoIP telephony service provider in Asia, has increased its offer for Pacific Internet by 15 percent to $9.50 per share in cash, or a total of about $127.8 million.

MediaRing owns about 4.8 percent of the Singapore-based Internet service provider along with several parties. The company offered to buy Pacific Internet, or PacNet, for $8.25 per share in February, but last month PacNet’s board rejected the takeover bid, calling it “inadequate.”

Vantage Corporation, which owns about 29 percent of PacNet and which has two directors on the PacNet board, has also publicly rejected MediaRing’s offer. The company said its new bid represents a premium of 47 percent to PacNet’s closing price on Feb. 24, before MediaRing made its offer public, and a 20 percent premium to PacNet’s closing price of $7.95 on Wednesday.

The tender offer for PacNet, originally scheduled to expire June 26, has now been extended to July 10, and is not subject to any financing condition. As of June 21, about 3.5 percent of PacNet’s shares have been tendered.

“We are taking this step to demonstrate our commitment to our offer for PacNet,” said Koh Boon Hwee, executive director of MediaRing, in a statement. “Given PacNet's share price performance in recent months and market uncertainty going forward, we believe our revised cash offer represents very good value for PacNet's shareholders.”

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Cindy Waxer is a Toronto-based freelance journalist specializing in business and technology. She has written for publications including TIME, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0, Computerworld, Canadian Business, and Workforce Management. To see more of her articles, please visit Cindy Waxer’s columnist page.