The Valentia consortium has extended the closing date on its offer for Eircom by a week to 3pm on Friday September 28th having failed to reach the required 80 per cent level of acceptances by the first closing date.

A Valentia spokesman said yesterday that the consortium was confident it would reach the 80 per cent level within the next week. Valentia said it had received acceptances representing 70.52 per cent of the Eircom issued share capital by 3pm last Friday. Some 202,000 of Eircom's 450,000 retail shareholders sent in valid acceptances. Retail shareholders own about 22 per cent of Eircom.

In a statement Valentia chairman Sir Anthony O'Reilly said he believed the consortium would "soon receive further acceptances that will carry us over the important 80 per cent acceptances threshold". He called for "speedy regulatory approvals" so that the deal could be quickly declared unconditional when the 80 per cent level of acceptances is reached. Eircom shareholders will start to receive payment for their Eircom shares about two weeks after the deal goes unconditional.

In addition to the 70.52 per cent acceptances Valentia said acceptances covering 4.5 per cent of Eircom shares had been received after the 3pm deadline last Friday and could not be included in the count. These late acceptances came mainly from institutions, the Valentia spokesman said. About 10,000 late acceptances were received from retail shareholders, he said. Acceptances covering another 4 per cent were received but were not properly completed, according to the spokesman who said the main problem was the absence of share certificates. These acceptances will "be corrected" in coming days, he added.

In its statement yesterday Valentia made some corrections to its offer document: the number of Eircom shares held by companies in the Schroder Salomon Smith Barney Group had been overstated by 11,556 shares and was corrected to a total of 109,693 shares while the shares held by companies in the NCB Group had been understated by 16,081 shares and was corrected to 78,227 shares.

Under Valentia's €3 billion bid for Eircom, shareholders have been offered €1.365 per Eircom share. Among the accepting shareholders are Comsource, the alliance of KPN and Telia which owns 35 per cent. The acceptances include about half of the 15 per cent stake held by the Employee Share Ownership Trust. The remaining portion is mortgaged and cannot be pledged until the securities are unwound in the coming weeks.