Bell Canada is offering to pay CAD 6.05 ($4.92) per share for the Montreal-based company, which employs almost 1,000 people and has annual sales of CAD 125m ($102m). The price did not offer any premium on Nexxlink’s share price, instead Bell Canada insisted that it was still above the fair market value of the shares according to the external consultants it had hired to advise it.
Bell Canada needs 66% of shareholder approval to complete the deal, and it already has 41% of votes pledged to it from the Nexxlink board and IT services provider CGI Group Inc that bought almost a third of the company when the two companies formed a partnership deal in October 2003.
