From the HYP Practical post I linked to above - I'm posting this reply here because it's relevant to all PFG shareholders, not just the HYPers among them:
jimleigh wrote:... with the NSF bid dead line looming next week 23/05/19, ...
I presume that's a deadline supplied by your broker, since it's decidedly earlier than the earliest deadline I believe NSF have given (29/05/2019 in the offer document). The 6-day difference is at the long end of what I would expect a broker to allow itself to collate the responses they've obtained from their clients and pass the results on to the company registrar, but probably not so far above what they should be able to achieve to justify a complaint IMHO.
The deadline in NSF's offer document has an "(unless extended)" condition. The timetable was extended (see the 15/04/2019 RNS in the list in my last post), apparently by a week (judging by NSF's 29/04/2019 RNS), which would push the deadline for NSF to declare the offer wholly unconditional out to 05/06/2019 - and if your broker doesn't extend their deadline similarly in due course, I really would feel a complaint was justified.
Likewise for any further extensions - which is relevant because the 15/05/2019 announcement by NSF saying that they'd made the offer unconditional as to acceptances says:
Continuation of the Offer
The Offer will remain open for acceptance until further notice and for at least seven calendar days following the date on which the Offer becomes or is declared unconditional in all respects. In any event, not less than 14 calendar days' notice will be given in respect of the closure of the Offer.
The important points are:
* Your acceptance or not of the offer will no longer make any difference at all to whether NSF actually go through with the offer: they will if the other conditions of the offer are all satisfied or waived, and otherwise they won't. Unless your shareholding is a
lot bigger than I would expect around here, it of course never was going to make more than a microscopic difference to whether the acceptance condition had been satisfied - but now the acceptance condition has been satisfied, it won't make even that much difference.
* If NSF doesn't go through with the offer, due to its other conditions not all being satisfied or waived, your acceptance or not of the offer won't make any difference to anything.
* If NSF does go through with the offer, due to its other conditions all being satisfied or waived, your acceptance or not of the offer will make the obvious difference to whether it is applied to your shareholding or not - but you will get 14 days notice of when your ability to accept the offer finally runs out provided you pay attention to what NSF is saying in RNSes. Your acceptance or not won't make any difference to whether the offer is applied to the holdings of other shareholders who have accepted the offer (as it definitely will be applied to them in this case), but can make a difference (though again a microscopic one) to whether it is applied to the holdings of other shareholders who haven't accepted the offer - this is because if the acceptance level reaches 75%, NSF will become able to delist PFG (making continuing to hold PFG shares decidedly unattractive to most shareholders) and if it reaches 90% (measured in a slightly different way), NSF will be able to compulsorily purchase the remaining PFG shares.
Note that the last point applies equally well in reverse - if all the other conditions are satisfied or waived, and you decide not to accept the offer, other shareholders' decisions about accepting or not accepting the offer may well end up affecting whether you can keep your PFG holding or end up having to either sell it, accept the offer or have it compulsorily purchased (which would have the same eventual effect as accepting the offer). The other shareholders may well include big ones, so those differences may well not be microscopic - e.g. if Schroders were to change their position about hanging on to PFG shares, that would probably make quite a big difference... In the case of a nominee holding, what your broker's terms & conditions say about how they'll deal with such situations might well end up being relevant as well, and so might ISA regulations if they're held in an ISA.
I can't make the decision about accepting or not for you, of course - but the only way I can see the decision having to be made this week is if something happens this week that persuades NSF to abandon the offer before the remaining conditions are all satisfied or waived, and if that were to happen, your decision wouldn't make any difference to anything anyway! In all other cases, NSF's commitment to 14 days' notice (which I believe they're obliged to make under the Takeover Code) will keep pushing the deadline out until they do give that notice.
Gengulphus