American Financial Group Boosts Its Offer to Buy Public Minority Stake in National Interstate to $32 per Share

American Financial Group, Inc. AFG announced that it sweetened its offer to buy all of the outstanding common shares of National Interstate Corporation NATL to $32.00 per share in cash. The offer is for the stake that is not currently held by AFG's wholly-owned subsidiary, Great American Insurance Company (GAIC). American Financial Group indicated that the planned transaction would not be subject to a financing condition. On July 6, the company delivered a letter to the special committee of the Board of Directors of National Interstate. The letter stated, "The $32.00 per share price represents a 41.5% premium over National Interstate's unaffected share closing price on March 4, 2016, the last trading day prior to public announcement of our proposal, and a 6.5% premium over yesterday's closing price. The $32.00 per share price is a 1.8x multiple of National Interstate's book value per share excluding unrealized gains on fixed maturities as of March 31, 2016, and a 27.6x multiple of National Interstate's 2015 diluted net income from operations per share." The company's letter further stated, "We have raised our offer price $2.00 per share since our initial proposal, which represents aggregate additional consideration of approximately $20 million that will be paid to National Interstate shareholders other than GAIC." NATL traded 2.43 percent higher while AFG shed 0.11 percent on Wednesday.