InfoUSA may have disbanded the special committee formed to evaluate chairman and CEO Vinod Gupta’s buyout offer, but at least one investor still has questions. The committee rejected Gupta’s $11.75 per-share offer for the 62% of the stock he doesn’t own, and was dissolved last Friday.
James Awad told Dow Jones News that he wondered whether there had been other, higher bids for the Omaha, NE-based data compiler, and whether the special committee had pursued these offers. Awad’s firm, Awad Asset Management, owned more than 2.8 million shares of the firm as of late June, after selling nearly 1 million shares.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, Gupta denied that his firm had received any other offers. Gupta added that the special committee had been formed to evaluate his offer only.
“Since I withdrew my offer, any offer we get the whole board will review,” Gupta told the Omaha World-Herald. “I don’t know what [Awad] is talking about. I have not seen any offers.”
Jeff Hershey, a senior analyst at Awad Asset Management, offered some clarification. “We want to make sure the board is acting on behalf of all shareholders,” Hershey said. “We want to make sure the board is not beholden to the chairman and CEO. The mandate of the special committee was not just to review Vin’s offer, but to seek out and explore all offers that would maximize shareholder value.”
Hershey continued by saying that it seemed pretty clear that the reason the board rejected Vin’s offer was because it had a higher offer on the table. Hershey referred to an Aug. 25 statement from infoUSA, which read in part “the [special committee] had determined, in light of his proposal and potential strategic alternatives available to the company, that it is in the best interests of the company's stockholders to continue to explore potential strategic alternatives.”
While Hershey did not specify what Awad’s next step would be, he did say that it was unlikely his company would drop the matter.
InfoUSA’s share price, which had reached $11.74 in mid-June, closed Tuesday at $10.02.
Separately, infoUSA announced that its Unlimited Business Credit Report site, http://www.credit.net, had been enhanced to include business URLs, related company news, UCC filings and mapping, in addition to its other company demographics.
