Active Value tables £270m offer for Hogg Robinson

HOGG ROBINSON, the world's second-largest business travel company, yesterday received a £270m bid approach from Active Value Advisers, the investment fund run by the corporate raiders Brian Myerson and Julian Treger.

HOGG ROBINSON, the world's second-largest business travel company, yesterday received a £270m bid approach from Active Value Advisers, the investment fund run by the corporate raiders Brian Myerson and Julian Treger.

The offer values Hogg Robinson at 330p a share - a 34 per cent premium to its closing price last week of 245.5p and a near 70 per cent premium to its low for the year.

AVA, which owns just under 4 per cent of Hogg Robinson, said its move had the support of key institutional shareholders. However, these do not include British Airways, one of the travel group's biggest shareholders with a 14 per cent stake, which has refused to back the bid.

Mr Myerson said: "Hogg Robinson is a company with considerable but thus far unrealised potential. We believe that our proposals will unlock the potential value of Hogg Robinson and are the only way forward."

AVA and Hogg Robinson are understood to have had informal discussions five or six weeks ago but these got nowhere. Mr Myerson and Mr Treger want Neville Bain replaced as chairman of Hogg Robinson.

But an AVA spokesman insisted it did not want to get rid of the rest of the management, led by chief executive David Radcliffe. Nor was it proposing to break up the business.

The offer of 330p a share will only go ahead if AVA gets the approval of the Hogg Robinson board. It would be funded one-third in cash and two-thirds in shares issued through one of AVA's shell companies such as John Mansfield, which bid unsuccessfully for the buildings supplies group Marley earlier this year.

AVA recently announced a new $1bn fund, raised mostly from US investors, which would be used to finance the cash element of the offer. Mr Myerson justified the bid on the grounds that Hogg Robinson had underperformed the support services sector by 63 per cent over the last five years.

Its recent strategy of disposing of non-core businesses and buying back shares had also failed to revive the company's stock market value. There have also been rumours about the company being taken private.

The AVA spokesman said it had received "significant" levels of support from other shareholders but declined to name them. Other big shareholders include Fidelity with 15 per cent; Schroders, with 9 per cent; Legal & General, with 4 per cent, and the Prudential with just under 4 per cent.