Faced with bankruptcy the board of Irish Independent Petroceltic on 6 April recommended that shareholders accept an offer of a mere £0.03 per share from activist investor Worldview Capital. The offer, worth just £6.42mn ($9.05mn), comes only 18 months after Emirates National Oil Company subsidiary Dragon Oil tried to buy the firm for $800mn (MEES, 10 October 2014).
It was downhill from there. Worldview, which has steadily built a stake since 2011, in January 2015 lambasted Petroceltic CEO Brian O’Cathain's board for “failures… including the failed offer by Dragon Oil (MEES, 16 January 2015). Dragon pulled back from the provisional offer, which was never formalized, at the end of 2014 as collapsing oil prices left $800mn looking over-generous (MEES, 5 December 2014). (CONTINUED - 1135 WORDS)
