RE:Yes, It IS Just Business
With regard to the White Knight scenario: If rumours of a possible takeover offer for COS by SU was circulating last spring and other parties were interested, youd think they would have approached COS management at that time, determined what Suncor was offering (0.32 SU?), and started doing their own due diligence then to see if they wanted to make a friendly takeover offer that was more enticing than SUs offer, or at least determine how much they were prepared to offer to obtain COSI think COS management has painted itself into a corner: They allegedly already rejected 0.32 SU outright without even putting it to a vote by COS shareholders, so if they recommended a share price equivalent at anything below that to COS shareholders at any point from now on, it would make them look bad. They also hired Royal Bank (at COS shareholders' expense) to find prospective alternate bids. This tells me that they realize COSs future value is very uncertain and are hoping for another company to bail them out with an offer that is significantly superior to SUs proposal otherwise they would have simply stated SUs bid was way too low, COS is not for sale, and they would only consider recommending an offer to shareholders if some entity took the initiative to approach THEM with a too-good-to refuse proposalAlso, any offer from another party will automatically be compared to what 0.25 SU share and 0.32 SU share are worth at the time the offer is announced. Now, the lower the SU stock price, the lower the bar would be to get a superior offer, but if SUs stock price goes down, it likely means the price of oil is going down too, which would likely make any competing offer lower as well a catch-22 situation for COS management..Finally, its quite odd to observe that if COS wins this court challenge, the COS share price will likely plummet if no other alternative (and superior) takeover offer is simultaneously announced (since the market will consider the SU bid dead combined with the uncertainty of whether another company will make an offer). Conversely, if SU wins this court challenge, the COS price may maintain its current value or trade around 0.25 SU since the market will see that the 0.25 SU bid may have legs after all However, even if SU wins the court challenge, its hard to see SU pulling off a shareholder vote by the December 4 deadline perhaps if they win the court battle, SU will extend the 0.25 offer long enough to get a vote from COS shareholders?