Betr Entertainment has demanded a recount on the vote to approve Mixi’s takeover of PointsBet, claiming that its votes were “impermissibly excluded.”
A PointsBet press release said 95.7 per cent of votes cast in Wednesday’s ballot were in favour of the Mixi offer, with only 4.31 per cent against.
It has therefore said the Mixi takeover, through a scheme of arrangement which values PointsBet at AU$1.20 per share, is set to go ahead.
However, betr has insisted that it wants a recount because its vote against was not included.
As part of its own attempts to win the takeover battle for PointsBet, betr has become PointsBet’s largest shareholder at 19.9 per cent – which it intended to use to vote against Mixi’s proposal on Wednesday.
But a betr statement said: “It appears that the chair of the meeting has impermissibly excluded betr’s vote against the scheme and provided no basis for doing so.
“The company confirms it validly lodged its proxy vote against the scheme as recorded in the PointsBet announcement this morning. Betr did not, at any time, revoke that proxy.
“Betr expects that the chair of the meeting will immediately conduct a recount of the vote and include the betr proxy vote in full. If the chair of the meeting fails to do so and announce the results prior to the Second Court Hearing tomorrow morning, betr will challenge the exclusion of its vote at tomorrow’s Second Court Hearing.”
PointsBet has consistently recommended Mixi’s offer despite betr’s attempts to convince the company otherwise. On Monday, PointsBet insisted it is willing to listen to betr over its offer, but only if it provided more details – and more convincing details at that – about the superiority of its offer.
The key issues for PointsBet have been that betr’s offer does not provide the same certainty in terms of price per share, which it claims is more volatile than Mixi’s fixed $1.20 per share.
PointsBet has also voiced concern about the structure of potential scrip and buy-back mechanisms.
“In the interim, betr continues to prepare its unconditional takeover offer direct to PointsBet shareholders and will share further details with the market in coming days,” the company added.
