Air Products’ Airgas Offer Too Low

Bloomberg reports that Air Products & Chemicals Inc.’s $5.9 billion hostile takeover offer for Airgas Inc. is too low, a Credit Suisse Group AG investment banker hired by Airgas’s board testified. The $70-a-share offer doesn’t properly value the packaged-gas provider’s business, given Airgas’s performance and position in the marketplace, David DeNunzio told Delaware Chancery Court Judge William B. Chandler III today in Georgetown. Chandler is hearing Air Products’ lawsuit challenging Airgas’s poison-pill takeover defense. Airgas has used its poison- pill defense, designed to make hostile takeovers too expensive, to help fend off bids from Air Products for more than a year. Airgas directors have said the company is worth at least $78 a share.