MONTREAL and HALIFAX – BCE and Bell Aliant announced the final results of BCE's offers to purchase all outstanding Bell Aliant publicly held common shares and to exchange all outstanding Bell Aliant preferred shares on Friday.
As of 5:00 PM Eastern on October 2, more than 90% of the publicly held Bell Aliant common shares as of the date of the offer had been validly tendered to BCE's offer and not withdrawn. BCE has taken up and expects to pay for tendered shares not previously acquired on October 7, 2014 at which time pro-ration information related to the cash and share alternatives for the common shares tendered during the extension will be available here.
With over 90% of the outstanding publicly held common shares of Bell Aliant tendered, BCE will proceed to acquire the balance of the common shares not tendered through a compulsory acquisition that is expected to be mailed in mid-October to holders of common shares who did not tender their shares to the offer. The compulsory acquisition is expected to be completed on or about October 31, 2014.
BCE has entered into an agreement with Bell Aliant Preferred Equity Inc. (Prefco) to effect an amalgamation of Prefco with a newly incorporated, wholly owned subsidiary of BCE. A special meeting of the Prefco preferred shareholders will be held on October 31st at 9:30 AM Atlantic to consider the amalgamation. BCE intends to vote all of the preferred shares that it owned as of September 30, 2014, the record date for the meeting, in favour of the amalgamation, which will be sufficient to approve the amalgamation and complete the privatization of Prefco.
