Typically with competing bids, it’s clear who’s in the box seat. Not so much with the all-share slugfest for DS Smith, the prize bit of corporate cardboard now being fought over by the London-listed Mondi and America’s International Paper Company.
Mondi thought it had its UK rival in the bag with an “agreement in principle” three weeks ago for an all-paper tie-up that would have seen its investors take 54 per cent of the combo and Smith’s 46 per cent: a deal cutely timed, too, for the retirement of Miles Roberts, the Smith boss of 13 years. Still, his opposite number at Mondi, Andrew King, would have been alive to the risk of an interloper. International Paper was always the obvious one.
Valued at more
