Lone Star bumps up offer for McCarthy & Stone

Lone Star has sweetened its bid for London-listed retirement housebuilder McCarthy & stone.

The US private equity firm has upped its offer to 120p a share from 115p in October.

The offer price, which is a 44.6% premium to the McCarthy closing share price on 22 October, before the initial offer was made, values the company at around £647m.

McCarthy said its directors consider the terms of the final offer to be "fair and reasonable" and unanimously recommend that shareholders vote in favour of the deal. A general meeting is scheduled to take place later in the day.

At 1235 GMT, the shares were up 2.8% at 119.00p.