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Zapata gets buyout offer by e-mail
By SCOTT BARANCIK, Times Staff Writer
Zapata Corp. is no stranger to unconventional business plans. Founded by former U.S. President George Bush half a century ago as an oil and gas concern, the publicly traded company's largest shareholder is the Tampa's Glazer family, which also owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Zapata bought and sold (at a loss) a large stake in a sausage casings firm, landed in the unsexy business of processing fish protein and for a time jumped on the Internet bandwagon with a dud called Zap.com. On Monday, Zapata may have met its match in peculiarity. Calling Zapata's stock "very undervalued," a group identifying itself as Hollingsworth Rothwell & Roxford sent an unsolicited offer by fax and e-mail to acquire it for $45 per share, or $108-million in cash. "Immediate" financing was promised. "We've talked to eight banks already," partner Theodore Roxford said in an interview from Melbourne. "Every one of them is willing to throw money at it." He said Zapata, based in Rochester, N.Y., has $90-million in after-debt cash, which could be used to repay acquisition-related loans. But Roxford and his firm appear to have sprung out of nowhere last month, making an implausible $79-billion offer for Sony Corp., which was roundly ignored. Hollingsworth Rothwell & Roxford didn't create its Web site (www.hrrma.com) or register its name with the State of Florida until a couple weeks ago. Roxford said the group's low profile is deliberate. Investors, among whom he counted legendary Texas investor T. Boone Pickens, typically demand confidentiality when conducting mergers and acquisitions, he contended, and banks ready to finance the Zapata purchase stipulated that they not be named in advance. For its part, Zapata was noncommittal. In a one-paragraph news release Wednesday, the company acknowledged the takeover bid and said its board of directors would respond publicly this week. Neither chief financial officer Leonard DiSalvo nor members of the Glazer family returned phone calls seeking comment. Disclosure of the bid inspired fevered trading of Zapata's stock Wednesday, though the price rose just 4 percent, or $1.39, to close at $37.78 per share. Trading was halted briefly in the morning. Roxford acknowledged that he and his partners own stock in Zapata, though less than 5 percent of all outstanding shares. But he denied that the group was trying to manipulate the stock upward in order to make a killing selling their own shares. "Absolutely not," he said, "we want Zapata. We would do this if we had stock or we didn't." -- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com
or (727) 893-8751.
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From the Times Business report
From the AP
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