Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. (COS) is recommending that shareholders reject the offer made earlier this month by Suncor Energy Inc. to acquire all outstanding COS shares (OGJ Online, Oct. 6, 2015).
COS’s board has completed a full review of the $4.3-billion (Can.) offer and determined it to be inadequate, opportunistic, and exploitive.
The offer “substantially undervalues” the COS 36.74% ownership in the Syncrude oil sands joint venture, COS said.
In a letter to shareholders, COS said the Suncor bid “fails to recognize that COS is strongly positioned to withstand low oil prices and emerge with even greater value when oil prices recover.”
COS said the Suncor bid is “highly opportunistic” as it is “designed to take advantage of unprecedented political, economic and regulatory uncertainty in the industry and the dramatic deterioration in the price of COS common shares.”
COS’s board is looking at a “full range of strategic alternatives,” it said.
