Perpetual's take over bid for The Trust Company will become effective from 4 December after the NSW Supreme Court approved the arrangement under which Perpetual will acquire all the shares in Trust.
According to documents lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) by Perpetual and Trust, tomorrow will also be the last day Trust shares will be traded on the ASX before the issuance of Perpetual shares to Trust shareholders on 18 December.
The court ruling follows the granting of shareholder approval at a general meeting held last week in which more than 83 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of the scheme of arrangement which would result in the merger of the two groups.
The ruling also ends the ongoing take-over tussle that began in May between Perpetual and Equity Trustees. It was characterised by counter-offers, rebuttals of the value of the respective offers and surprise bid by IOOF for Trust, which was beaten by a revised Perpetual offer.
Perpetual chief executive officer and managing director Geoff Lloyd said the merged entity would deliver greater scale across Perpetual's business units and that plans were well underway for integrating Trust into Perpetual.
As part of these moves Lloyd and Perpetual chief financial officer Gillian Larkins will join the board of Trust.
