After accepting a cash offer from Trinidad-headquartered Lease Operators, UK’s Trinity Exploration and Production, which has a portfolio of onshore and offshore oil assets located solely in Trinidad and Tobago, is moving forward with the proposed merger.
Even though the conditions were met for Trinity to be acquired by Canada’s Touchstone Exploration, with the shareholders giving their blessing for the merger in June, the story got a plot twist when Lease Operators made a cash offer for Trinity in late July. The UK player accepted the offer in early August as it felt it was “a material improvement for Trinity Shareholders over the Touchstone offer” .
At the time, the boards of directors of Trinity and Lease Operators announced that an agreement was reached on the terms of acquisition of the entire share capital of Trinity by Lease Operators, to be effected through a court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement, conditional upon the fulfillment of relevant terms and conditions.
The firms have now disclosed that one of the conditions has been met after Trinidad’s Minister of Energy and Energy Industries confirmed that his consent is not required for the merger to proceed.
Following this, the proposed acquisition remains subject to certain other conditions, including the approval by the Trinidad and Tobago Commission and Trinity shareholders at the court and general meetings, as well as the court’s sanction of the scheme at a hearing.