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Maybe it doesn’t need a white knight after all.
Knight Capital’s board emerged from another meeting yesterday to review dueling takeover offers without making a decision.
Both Getco and Virtu Financial have made bids for the Jersey City, NJ-based Knight, which had to be bailed out several months ago after a $460 million trading glitch nearly tanked the firm.
“[Knight] can still decide to remain independent. That’s a real possibility,” said one source familiar with the bidding process.
A spokesman for Knight Capital declined to comment.
On Wednesday, Chicago-based rival Getco went public with a more than $1 billion cash-and-stock offer for Knight, which values the shares at $3.50 — a roughly 5 percent premium to yesterday’s closing price. The shares closed down 4 cents, at $3.33.
Virtu, meanwhile, submitted an all-cash offer equal to $3 to $3.20 a share. A report in the Wall Street Journal last evening has PE titan Cerberus Capital in talks to join the Virtu bid.
Getco is pushing Knight to make a decision by Thursday, said sources, who noted that the firm may take longer to act.
One reason may be that the board wasn’t particularly wowed by either deal, one source said, both of which value the company at about where it was at the depth of its crisis.
Knight, run by CEO Tom Joyce, believes it is on much firmer footing than it was four months ago as clients return. The firm, a market maker, serves as an intermediary in the trading of stocks and other securities.
Knight traded above $10 before errant trades hammered its stock price in August, forcing it to accept a $400 million lifeline from six financial firms, including Getco.
Those firms own 70 percent of Knight.
Walking away will depend on how the majority of Knight’s shareholders ultimately view the deal.