Singapore's BW Group has added a significant chunk of Epic Gas stock as its takeover offer nears the deadline.
The voluntary bid to acquire all outstanding shares in the VLGC owner has won 1.32m shares, or 1.87% of the company, as of 11 April.
Together with previously received acceptances, BW Group has now received a total of 9.95m shares or 14.12%.
This brings its holding to 68.82%
The offer expires on 16 April, but got off to a slow start, with the company adding just 0.12% of shares by 3 April.
BW bought 54.7% of Epic for about $50m on 19 March.
It has previously said it may extend the bid, but by no more than four weeks.
BW's initial deal for Epic included the purchase of all of the shares held by certain affiliates of Jefferies Financial Group and DVB SIIM.
It continued a busy period for the Singaporean group which has been blazing a merger-and-acquisition trail with successful deals in the product and chemical tanker markets over the past year.
Epic is also no stranger to consolidation, having been formed via a combination with Pantheon in 2012 and is backed by famed deal-makers Chris Buttery and Paul Over.
The structure of BW's move on Epic is a carbon copy of its swoop for Hafnia Tankers last year, with an initial stake acquired and an offer in place for the remaining stock.
BW said it will offer an additional consideration equal to $3.5m to be divided by the total number of shares acquired under the offer, provided that it will be no higher than $0.10 per share.
