Brazillian billionaires Safra and Cutrale raised their offer for Chiquita as a last-minute effort to buy out the banana-producing giant and preventing its merger with Fyffes.
Early this month, Chiquita rejected an offer worth $1.3 billion from Brazillian billionaires and businessmen Joseph Safra and Jose Luis Cutrale and rather chose to go through with the deal with Fyffes.
Cutrale, who runs fresh fruit juice producer Grupo Cutrale, and Safra who operates investment firm Safra Group both made a collective bid for Chiquita back in August for for $13 per share, and eventually offered $1.3 billion dollars ($14 per share) early this month.
Cutrale said that acquiring Chiquita would allow his company to "diversify away from the slowing orange juice market," and move to to the fruit-producing industry which is generated $7 billion global exports sales in 2013.
Some analysts say that Cutrale and Safra would not be able to take hold of Chiquita unless they offer $15 per share.
However, Chiquita deemed the offer as "not in the best interests of Chiquita shareholders" and rejected the offer from Cutrale and Safra.
The offer of $14.50 per share higher than that of Fyffes, Brazillian companies as a last-minute effort before Chiquita meets with Fyfffes on Friday and finally vote for the merger, which was announced last March and would create the biggest banana company by sales.
Chiquita and Fyffes, fresh produce companies most famous for their bananas, announced last September that under the new all-stock deal, Chiquita Brands International Inc Shareholders will amass 59.6 percent of both companies combined a compared to its previous stake of 50.7 percent, in an effort to keep their deal going.
However, Fyffes' offer of $11.80 per share is significantly lower than that of Cutrale and Safra's, however a merger with the two companies would give Chiquita an upper hand of the biggest banana-producing company in the world.
"Comparatively, a deal with Cutrale-Safra undervalues the company's potential and represents only a finite value, putting a hard cap to upside for Chiquita shareholders," Fyffes stated after Cutrale and Safra made the offer last week in an interview with FT.
