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Billionaire fund manager Crispin Odey doesn’t think BCA’s £2bn takeover will materialise

Published: 00:27 25 Jun 2019 AEST

webuyanycar
Odey “can’t see any point” in buying BCA

Star fund manager Crispin Odey is convinced that a £2bn takeover bid for WeBuyAnyCar owner BCA Marketplace PLC (LONP:BCA) will fail – and the Brexit-backing billionaire has put his money where his mouth is.

Last week, BCA confirmed it was in “advanced” talks with private equity house TDR Capital over a potential 243p-a-share buy-out, and the news sent shares soaring by almost a fifth to 239p.

READ: BCA shares rev higher on 'advanced' takeover talks

But Odey doesn’t expect TDR to come through and formalise its proposed offer, and is positioning his Odey Asset Management fund to profit by building a short position in the car auction company’s shares.

According to shorttracker.co.uk, Odey held a 0.61% short position in BCA earlier this month and he claims to have upped that since learning about the possible bid, although the size of his stake is yet to be confirmed.

“BCA is expensive at that level and it’s a business that is likely to return 5%, maybe 11% or 12% at best, and that’s just not enough,” Odey told the Sunday Telegraph.

“There’s a lot of evidence that Webuyanycar.com could be bypassed as a platform as the automotive industry changes, and I can’t see any point in buying these sort of assets with the potential for a downturn and the prospect for a trade war and tariffs affecting the sector.”

BCA shares were down 1.3% to 234.8p in afternoon-trading on Monday.

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