Booker/Tesco Merger

[Alaric]

The terms of the merger have now been announced.

0.861 New Tesco Shares; and
42.6 pence in cash per 1 Booker share.

Alternatively there are mix and match offers of "all share" and "all cash". These might be scaled back.

Personally I'm going for all cash (in a taxed account). As an existing Tesco shareholder, I don't want to over complicate the CGT position and it's the time of year where I look to make sales to harvest this year's CGT allowance and raise the cash for next year's ISA.

I haven't yet felt motivated to entirely dump Tesco, but arguably they are still under the cloud of the dodgy accounting from a couple of years ago.

[CommissarJones]

42.6 pence in cash

By coincidence, that is almost exactly the price at which I bought BOK in June 2010. I sold last year - the sale was from a taxable account, but split into two transactions that fell in different tax years, thus keeping me within the capital gains allowance for each tax year. My motivation to sell was partly down to a desire to avoid having too much TSCO, which I hold (ugh) in my ISA, and partly to a real world circumstance.

BOK was a terrific investment for me, I think Charles Wilson is a great businessman, and I was delighted to see recently that he was named as head of TSCO's U.K. and Irish operations, the main part of its business. IMV, Wilson is clearly being lined up to take over as CEO of TSCO, which is fine by me.