IN one of the few hostile Norwegian moves against British interests since the Vikings, Kvaerner has made its all-cash 100p-a-share bid for the Amec engineering and construction group.
The offer was rejected late in the afternoon by Amec chairman Sir Alan Cockshaw who was in Japan over the weekend to drum up new business.
But soon after the Kvaerner move, Amec found itself slighted by Alfred McAlpine to whom it had made a friendly overture on Thursday which it followed up on Friday with an unsolicited bid of two new Amec shares for each McAlpine.
McAlpine's board unanimously turned down the offer, chief executive Oliver Whitehead saying it was not really of interest to the construction firm.
He added there had been protracted discussions last year but a merger approach could not be made to work because of the large number of Preference shares with a convertible price of 410p overhanging the Amec financial structure.
Kvaerner president and chief executive Erik Tonseth said there were important industrial synergies between it and Amec, with Amec having a higher value for it than it had on its own.
He added in an aside that when Kvaerner had bought the Govan shipyard on the Clyde in 1988 people had thought it slightly mad.
Govan was now making small profits and, although it had not achieved the profitability seen elsewhere in the group, it was doing ``marvellously'' compared with all other European shipbuilders.
He was visibly annoyed by the Amec approach to McAlpine. That had valued each share at 138p, at the time equivalent to an Amec share price of 69p, compared with the 100p Kvaerner had paid in the Thursday dawn raid mounted by SBC Warburg.
That netted 10% as he had wanted and raised the total Kvaerner stake to 12%. It was increased last night to 14%.
On Thursday he had had a friendly meeting with Sir Alan and, basically, they had the same views except that Amec wanted to remain an independent company.
He said he was surprised that, as the second largest shareholder, he had not been told it was about to make its McAlpine bid.
The attraction for him is that both companies supply the oil and gas sectors but in different parts of the North Sea, separated by a line where there should be a single market.
Amec is more concentrated on executing turnkey projects and would benefit from the Kvaerner balance sheet which, with just over #700m of shareholder funds, is more than 10 times greater than that of Amec.
Kvaerner employs about 23,000 people compared with Amec's 20,000, but Mr Tonseth would not be drawn on the scale of rationalisation other than to say the housebuilding activities would be sold.
Having a UK base would bring the benefits of Britain's international links and political clout which Norway lacks in these markets, particularly Asia.
The offer is final and will not be increased unless there is a counter-bid. It closes on December 18.The general sentiment is that Amec will find it difficult to resist given its dull record in recent years.
An offer for the 172 million Preference shares will be made later this week as the Budget could include stock market implications for interest rates.
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