Agora raises share price in bid for AMS advertising
The media concern Agora increased yesterday the price it intends to pay for
shares of outdoor advertising company Art Marketing Syndicate (AMS) in a
public offer to zl.63 from zl.60, bringing the total of the bid, scheduled
to end on Wednesday, to nearly $20 million. Since today's price for a share
of the company at one point reached as high as zl.61, an increase of the
price by 5% should not be a surprise, commented Andrzej Szymanski, an
analyst at BIG BG Brokers House. Earlier the board of directors of AMS said
that the real value of the shares was zl.100. Last week Agora called for the
sale of 1,254,000 shares of AMS, giving it 24.99% of votes at the general
shareholders' meeting, a move received by both AMS and its majority
shareholder BB Investment as pointing toward a hostile takeover. Owner of
Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's largest-circulation newspaper, Agora is keen to
diversify. AMS controls roughly a third of the domestic outdoor advertising
market. (Reuters; Prawo i Gospodarka, p. 14), M.T.
