Activision Blizzard has recommended to its shareholders that they should reject a mini-tender offer by TRC Capital Corporation that would purchase up to 2 million shares of Activision Blizzard common stock, the company announced Thursday.
The offer is for approximately 0.26% of Activision Blizzard’s common stock, but the offering price is 10.1% below the closing price per share of the common stock on January 17, 2018. On that date Activision Blizzard’s share price was $70.36.
A mini-tender offer is an offer to acquire a company’s shares from investors in an amount less than 5% of issued stock. Offers to purchase that are less than 5% of total shares are not governed by some regulations mandated by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, which means that the offers do not have to make all of the disclosures required for larger offers. The SEC has cautioned investors that some mini-tender offers make bids at below market prices to catch investors who have not compared the offer price to the market price.
TRC Capital has made similar mini-tender offers to other companies for years, including eBay Inc., Pfizer and OpenText.
