Biomet Capitulates In Merger Fight, Accepts $46.00 Private Equity Buyout

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Biomet, Inc. (BMET-NASDAQ) has recived and accepted a higher buyout price for shareholders.  The company announced that it has unanimously recommended to shareholders an increased offer from a private equity consortium to acquire Biomet for $46.00 per share in cash.  This $11.4 Billion deal is a sweetened offer from the private equity consortium including affiliates of the Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and TPG.  This will commence on June 14, 2007.

Morgan Stanley provided the Board of Directors with its opinion that the revised merger agreement is fair from a financial point of view to holders of Biomet common stock.  Completion of the tender offer is subject to the condition that at least 75% of the Biomet common shares have been tendered in the offer, which is the same percentage approval requirement as with the previous merger structure. 

As a result, Biomet announced that it has cancelled the special meeting of shareholders previously scheduled for Friday, June 8 to consider and vote on the original merger agreement AND has agreed not to pay its annual dividend.  Sharesare trading up 3% at $25.60 in pre-market activity, which is a new 52-week and 24-month high.  It is also at the high-end of an old trading range from back in 2004, so this new improved merger price will essentially make just about all shareholders whole.

Jon C. Ogg
June 7, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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