Alinta could � if, if and if - Business - Business - smh.com.au: "A STRANGE thing happened in the sharemarket yesterday. Just after lunch it was abuzz with rumours AGL had scheduled meetings with large investors in its takeover target, Alinta, to coincide with an announcement. The assumption was AGL was about to lift the offer price. Not surprisingly, the Alinta share price soared.
In response, the AGL machine moved into action, assuring anyone that might have heard this speculation that there were no unscheduled meetings with institutions on Friday and that no announcement was pending.
Maybe everyone was getting a bit excited because Alinta's boss, Bob Browning, was seen wandering through the lobby of Sydney's Westin Hotel yesterday rather than picking up his dinner suit from the cleaners before joining the throng of West Australian dignitaries for the 10-year celebration of John Howard's prime ministership at Perth's Hyatt.
Or perhaps there are too many trigger-happy traders second-guessing how this messy corporate scenario will play out.
At this stage, Alinta has a hostile bid on the table for AGL and AGL has one on the table for Alinta. Both are scrip bids that imply consistent values. Both have similar strategies on how to deal with the combined assets on completion of a deal.
The main thing on which they disagree is who will run the show.
Alinta has a couple of significant advantages in the battle. Firstly, it already has a near 20 per cent interest in AGL, so getting to a position of control is not quite as tough. It also has first-mover advantage, which means it's ahead in the race of time.
In AGL's favour there is size. If AGL wants to outbid Alinta, it can. On the other side of the coin, Alinta can only capitalise on its timing advantage if various regulators allow it. The first is the Australian Competition "