EcoSecurities boosted by offer

Peter Stiff
Shares in EcoSecurities rose 5½p to 88p after the group’s co-founder and former president said that he would pay more than £100 million for the carbon credits business.
Guanabara, a Dutch group chaired by Pedro Moura Costa, who stepped down as EcoSecurities’ president in April, has raised its offer for the group to 90p per share from 77p and extended the deadline for the bid, which was due to close today, until September 18. Guanabara has acceptances representing about 23.5 per cent of Eco’s shares, at present.
In response, EcoSecurities, which sources green projects, develops them so that they are eligible for carbon credits and sells them on, said that it would consider the terms of the revised offer. It has rejected outright the advances of Mr Costa, so far, and a previous approach from EDF Trading. Gus Hochschild, an analyst at Mirabaud, said the offer still fell “woefully short” of his valuation of the group and that he still expected Tricorona, a Swedish rival, to make a bid, which he thought would have to be above the 100p mark to garner a sufficient amount of interest.
SkyePharma fell 14p to 101¾p after the biotech said that Flutiform, its leading asthma drug, would need more tests before it won approval in the United States. As a result the group said that it did not expect to launch the product until late 2011.
Gulfsands Petroleum rose 6½p to 236½p despite denying reports that it was in takeover talks with Sinochem, the Chinese state-owned oil group. Last month Sinochem agreed to buy Emerald Energy, Gulfsands’ partner in a Syrian oil block, for almost $900 million (£557 million), prompting suggestions that it could also be interested in Gulfsands.