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REA Group now has eight and a half hours to decide whether to make another offer for Rightmove, in the hope of winning the board’s support, before hitting the 5pm ‘put up or shut up’ deadline.

Rightmove’s chair, Andrew Fisher, says the company has been through a “very disruptive” period since REA’s first offer, early in September:

“We respect REA and the success they have achieved in their domestic market. However, we remain confident in the standalone future of Rightmove. Rightmove has been the leading operator in the UK for over 20 years, and it has differentiated market presence, branding and technology, and very significant opportunities for future growth.

“The last few weeks have been very disruptive, as well as unsettling for our colleagues. To the extent REA wants to put forward a further proposal, I urge them to submit a best and final proposal ahead of today’s 5pm PUSU deadline such that we can bring certainty to this process.

The Rightmove and REA teams have known one another for many years, and have had numerous interactions, including discussions around strategy and best practice as recently as June.

Rightmove has taken every phone call that REA has made since its interest was first made public, with a level of engagement which in Rightmove’s view is customary and appropriate in the context of an unsolicited and unilateral series of approaches, made to a UK listed company, where the possible offeror is taking an incremental and iterative approach to price discovery.