(Alliance News) - Impellam Group PLC on Wednesday said it has agreed to a GBP483.2 million takeover offer from Heather Global PLC, a bidding vehicle for HeadFirst Global BV.

Impellam is a Luton, England-based staffing firm. Hoofddorp, Netherlands-based HeadFirst provides HR solutions, managed services and business consultancy.

The HeadFirst offer values each Impellam share at 1,084.4 pence in total. This represents a 67% premium over the stock's 650.00p close in London on Tuesday. Impellam was up 26% to 822.06p early Wednesday, backing off an opening high of 950.00p.

Impellam said the terms of the deal are "fair and reasonable", and its directors intend to recommend that shareholders vote in favour of the takeover.

For each Impellam share, shareholders will receive 557.2p in cash, plus 392.8p in principal amount of loan notes. They also still will receive the interim dividend of 55.9p that was declared by Impellam last month. In addition, Impellam will declare a further cash dividend of 22.4p and a non-cash dividend in specie worth 56.1p.

The loan notes will consist of both non-convertible and convertible notes.

The offer is supported by Impellam's majority owner Michael Ashcroft, a UK businessman who was formerly deputy chair of the UK Conservative Party. The talks with HeadFirst followed the decision announced by Ashcroft in April 2022 to sell his shares, which at the time represented a 62.0% stake. Ashcroft currently is interested in 57.8% of Impellam via a family trust, plus 5.1% directly.

HeadFirst Chair Han Kolff said: "This merger will be transformational, building on the complementary strengths of Impellam and HeadFirst. Together we will become a global leader in mission-critical data, tech and engineering talent enabling us to service our customers, suppliers and professionals in an unrivalled manner. There is a very exciting journey ahead with ample opportunities for our teams, leveraging HR tech depth and geographic reach further and faster."

By Tom Waite, Alliance News editor

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