Share prices in David Jones soared to $2.59 on Friday after a takeover offer of $1.65 billion from a little-known Private Equity firm was revealed and quickly scrutinised, prompting fears that tomorrow when the market reopens share prices in the #luxe department store could crash unless the legitimacy of the billion dollar bid is verified. There’s no other store, right guys?
According to the Herald Sun, DJs revealed it had received an “unsolicited letter” from EB Private Equity offering to buy 100% of the group. However, executive director Stephen Goddard revealed in a statement that “No details of EBPE’s financial capacity, its management, or any of the terms of the residual equity have been made available” which, when coupled with the fact that the firm’s registered address is a premises between a wig shop and a noodle restaurant, lends weight to suspicions that the whole thing is a big old houndstooth hoax.
Initial news of the takeover bid was published on a financial blogging website that had only begun published a month prior to the bid, and was created by a 20 year-old woman in Newcastle where the EBPE office is based, and who currently isn’t answering her phone. The only public response the bidder has made came through a tweet aimed at the Australian correspondent for the Financial Times, Neil Hume who tweeted:
Sounds official! Good one DJs, sounds like you’ve got your knickers in a twist over some very ambitious, laptop-wielding Gen Ys who communicate primarily via Twitter in an industrial area office that has seen its fair share of noodles pass through it. That doesn’t sound familiar at all. Stay tuned…
Photo: Caroline McCredie via Getty
