COS Board / Management Messed This Up
Here's my take on the situation: COS had the 60-day rule in effect re. takeover offers. COS management was allegedly offered 0.30+ SU share per COS share in a friendly takeover bid in the spring and rejected it. Then the price of oil takes another significant hit downwards and SU proposes a hostile takeover offer of 0.25 SU share. Management then proclaims they are retroactively changing from a 60-day rule to a 120-day rule and don't want their shareholders to even vote on the current SU offer by the December 4 deadline, which was within the rules at COS at the time the hostile takeover offer was made. COS management then uses COS shareholder money to hire Royal Bank in a desperate attempt to find a "while knight" to make a better offer, and apparently have four "interested parties" kicking the tires as I write this, hoping that one or more of them will, for some reason, offer more than SU is offering in this oil price environment. COS Management would have looked a touch better if they had made their arguments to shareholders as to why they should reject the SU offer and let the shareholders vote on it by December 4. If the offer was rejected, they then could implement the new 120-day rule and proceed from there. To prevent shareholders from voting on this deal by retroactively changing the timeframe for consideration of offers appears to be a COS Board / Management effort avoid the possible embarrassment if COS shareholders voted in favour of the SU offer.....