Jurys’ share price rises on expectation of challenge to Precinct offer

JURYS DOYLE shares hit €18 per share in early trading yesterday, raising expectations of a challenge to the Precinct bid of €17.50.

It is understood that key institutional shareholders were offered €17.80 per share for their holdings on Tuesday. They rejected the offers, expecting the battle for Jurys to heat up with at least one other bidder due to enter the market.

Analysts last night said that was the clear implication of the continuing rise in the share price of the country’s largest hotel chain.

Precinct’s deadline expires at 5pm today and it is expected to ask for a further extension.

No firm offer is yet on the table for the group but Precinct, backed by the billionaire Reubens brothers of London, has put four indicative offers on the table for the 33-strong hotel chain since its first bid of €15.25 in May. The Jurys Doyle board is split and the Doyle and Beatty families, who oppose the Precinct offer, have yet to deliver a counter-bid as predicted.

Favourite among the other potential bidders is Derek Quinlan of Quinlan Private, who has a strong track record in the market.

Both he and Paddy Kelly, who indicated an interest in the group yesterday, might still emerge with alternative offers.

Shares in Jurys were trading at €17.90 yesterday evening, off their earlier all-time €18 high.

At current prices, the market is expecting that such an offer would be above €18 per share, over 50 cent up on the last Precinct offer of €17.50.

Some analysts are asking what bidders such as Quinlan or Kelly would do with the properties that would become available to them in the form of the hotels.

They argue the Ballsbridge site was a key attraction, a fact highlighted by the 13 bids for the five acres when it was put on the market by Jurys recently.

One analyst questioned the commercial sense of paying out over €1.1bn to acquire 33 hotels, saying it was a very circuitous way of getting control of a five-acre site for which developer Sean Dunne looks set to pay €260m.

Mr Dunne has so far spent €37m buying up 3.5% of the group’s shares in the market on top of the €260m he has pledged to pay for the Ballsbridge land.

His move is designed to protect his interest in the fashionable Dublin 4 site, which he plans to covert into 500 luxurious apartments costing over €1m each.

He has also indicated his support for Precinct’s bid as a quid pro quo for retaining the Ballsbridge site if the Precinct bid goes through in the meantime.