Matt Moulding and the board of THG did the easy bit last week: they rejected a “highly preliminary” takeover proposal from a consortium led by one of the online retailer’s own non-executive directors. It will have been a simple decision, because rolling over at 170p a share, or £2.1bn, would be humiliating. Even some of the bears who used to get stuck into THG in the days of a 600p-plus share price thought fair value for this baffling group might lie around the 175p level.
What, though, would Moulding do if a serious bid – which a few in the City define as one around 250p a share – were to turn up? Such a plotline looks unlikely (as the current share price of 139p indicates), but the working assumption is that he’d be tempted by the idea of going private. He spoke of “options” in the infamous interview with GQ magazine last year in which he said listing in London “sucked from start to finish”.
