The private equity firm Apollo wins the bidding war for the British airline Easyjet, after competitor Castlelake announced that it will not raise its bid.

Easyjet's shares are rising. The bidding war for the low-cost airline Easyjet has had a winner. This after the investment company Castlelake, which first placed a bid for Easyjet on June 1, have announced that they will not raise their bid further.

The counterparty in the bidding is the venture capital company Apollo, which has trumped Castlelake's latest bid of £5.5 billion, with a bid of £5.7 billion.

Shortly after Castlelake announced that it would not raise the bid, Easyjet sent out a press release saying that it accepted the Apollo bid.

The offer from Apollo was 7.15 pounds per share, which represents a premium of just over 10 percent from Wednesday's closing price.

Following this, Easyjet announced that Castlelake would receive a deadline until August 7, to decide on a possible bid increase.

It is now clear that Castlelake will not match the competitor's bid.

”"We appreciate the constructive dialogue with Easyjet's board and management and would like to thank them for their time and consideration regarding the potential transaction," Castlelake wrote in a press release.

Easyjet's shares fell by around 7 percent on the London Stock Exchange shortly after Castlelake's announcement. Just under an hour later, they recovered and by 5 p.m., the shares were trading up around 4 percent.

During the summer, the stock has risen by just over 60 percent.

Source: DI.SE