Primary Health Properties offers £1.5bn to merge with Assura

(Sharecast News) - Real estate investment group Primary Health Properties has made a £1.5bn proposal to merge with Assura, the developer and manager of GP and primary care buildings. Under the cash and shares proposal, Assura shareholders will receive 0.3848 new PHP shares and 9.08p in cash, implying a value of 46.2p per Assura share - a 23.5% premium to its closing share price on the day before the offer period commenced on 13 February.

If the proposed merger goes ahead, Assura shareholders would hold 48% of the combined group's issued share capital.

PHP said that a deal would deliver "significant strategic and financial benefits" for shareholders on both side, creating the eighth largest UK-listed real estate investment trust, with a £6bn portfolio of long-leased, sustainable infrastructure assets.

The company also predicts there would be notable cost and operating synergies, bolstering earnings accretion and dividend growth for both companies, as well as improved access to capital markets.

The proposal comes ahead of the 'put up or shut up' deadline on 7 April.

"PHP is announcing the possible terms of the combination to provide shareholders of both companies with the opportunity to make their views known regarding the attractiveness of the combination, and to urge Assura shareholders to encourage the board of Assura to provide PHP with an extension to the deadline," PHP said in a statement.