Murdoch-backed REA ups offer for Rightmove

Australian property listings company REA Group, which is majority owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has upped its offer for UK rival Rightmove to £6.1bn. The group, which offered £5.6bn for the listing business earlier this month, was knocked back by Rightmove, which claimed the offer was “wholly opportunistic and fundamentally undervalued Rightmove and its future prospects”.   This latest offer is the second increase on REA’s indicative bid for the company, made on 5 September. Its first offer was at 705p per Rightmove share. This was then increased to 749p per share on 16 September, but again dismissed by Rightmove. The latest offer is at 770p per Rightmove share, a 39% premium to its “undisturbed” share price on 30 August. REA chief executive Owen Wilson said: “We believe that the combination of our world-leading expertise and technology with the attractive Rightmove business will create an enhanced experience for agents, buyers and sellers of property. “We live in a world of intensifying competition and this proposed transaction would bring together two highly complementary digital property businesses for investment and growth.” REA said it continued to believe that its bid for Rightmove represented a “highly compelling proposition” to unlock value for both Rightmove and REA through a number of avenues, including REA’s experience in investing in and growing adjacencies to support Rightmove in its ambition to accelerate expansion into areas including commercial property listings. Wilson said he had been “genuinely disappointed” at the lack of engagement by the Rightmove board and encouraged it to engage with this latest offer. He said the latest improved bid provided “a combination of immediate value certainty in cash and at the same time gives Rightmove shareholders an increasing opportunity in core digital property and adjacencies where we have much expertise”. REA will fund any takeover through long-term third-party debt and existing cash resources.