The UK private equity firm Terra Firma closed on its latest fund, raising 3.7 million British pounds, some of which will be used to fund its acquisition of EMI Group (5/22/07 RBR #100). Somehow, a writer for the UK website The Register took that to mean that the entire 3.7 billion would go to buy EMI and wrote a completely off-base story that Terra Firma had increased its bid by a billion plus, even though its previous bid of 2.4 billion pounds (4.7 billion US bucks) had already been accepted. The error was then picked up and repeated by the US website AllAccess.
Rest assured, Terra Firma's bid for EMI is not going to be boosted just for the sake of throwing more money around. Meanwhile, the private equity firm has set a deadline of June 27th for shareholder acceptances of its EMI buyout bid. Rumors persist that a topper bid could yet be coming.
