UK warehouse landlord Segro rejects £12.6bn takeover offer from US rival

The UK warehouse landlord Segro is at the centre of the latest transatlantic takeover battle after rejecting a £12.6bn takeover approach from the US rival Prologis. Prologis has gone public with its offer for the FTSE 100 company after it was “unequivocally rejected” by Segro’s board on Tuesday despite valuing the company at almost 25% more than its market value at that day’s close. In an appeal to Segro’s shareholders to get the company to engage, Prologis set out in a statement that under the terms of its all-share takeover proposal, shareholders in Segro would have received 0.084 Prologis shares for each share they hold. This implies a value of 925p for each Segro share, representing a 24.6% premium to Segro’s closing price on Tuesday. Segro is best known for building cavernous sheds to support the boom in online shopping, developing and renting buildings to companies such as Amazon and Netflix. Its shares jumped by as much as 15% in early trading on Wednesday to 875p, making them the top riser in London’s FTSE 100. The company said in a statement that its board had unanimously rejected the offer from Prologis as it “falls a long way short of Segro’s own views on value”. Segro’s business took off and its shares soared during the Covid pandemic when consumers were confined to their homes, creating huge demand for deliveries and putting pressure on warehouse space. …