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EasyJet rejects takeover offer from US investment firm Castlelake

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The tails of three EasyJet planes, painted red and white, parked on a runway.

EasyJet has rejected a fourth takeover offer worth £4.93bn from Castlelake.

The low-cost Luton-based airline said the US investment firm’s bid was worth £6.50 a share, compared with the previous offers of £5.60, £6 and £6.25 a share.

A spokesperson said it was giving Castlelake until 17:00 BST on 5 July to make a firm offer or walk away.

“Having carefully reviewed it with its advisers, the board of EasyJet continues to regard the fourth proposal as substantially undervaluing the company and its prospects and continuing to give rise to significant questions of deliverability,” said EasyJet.

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EasyJet said the takeover interest came at a time when its share price had been pushed down by concerns about the consequences of the Iran war.

The FTSE 250 firm’s shares had dropped by about 30% over the past year, before news of Castlelake’s interest.

EasyJet said it remained “concerned” about Castlelake’s ownership structure and ability to deliver any offer, adding the investor would need to provide “satisfactory assurances and commitments” on those issues.

Castlelake has assets under management worth $36bn (£27.3bn).

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Under the deal, EasyJet would be 49% owned by Castlelake and co-investors including Brookfield Asset Management, and 51% owned by individual European Union investors.

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Govt may keep Rs 7,500 cr outlay for IT hardware manufacturing under PLI scheme

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The Economic Times
NEW DELHI: The government may keep an outlay of Rs 7,500 crore under the production linked incentive scheme for IT hardware products like personal computers, laptops, tablets and servers, according to a source aware of the development.

Foreign companies looking for incentives under the scheme may have to invest Rs 500 crore over four years, while the threshold for domestic firms is likely to be around Rs 20 crore for five years, the source who did not wish to be named said.

“Meity (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) will take the Cabinet approval of the detailed guidelines soon and is hopeful of rolling out the scheme from next financial year. The incentive outlay is likely to be around Rs 7,500 crore,” the source said.

The government has announced a cumulative production linked incentive of Rs 2 lakh crore for 10 sectors to encourage domestic manufacturing after seeing traction of global giants like Apple’s contract manufacturers, Samsung etc for the scheme in the mobile devices segment.

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According to mobile devices industry body ICEA, India has the potential to scale up its cumulative laptop and tablet manufacturing capacity to over Rs 7 lakh crore by 2025 through policy interventions.

Scaling up laptop and tablet PC manufacturing can take the share of India in the global market to 26 per cent from 1 per cent at present.