Harworth, the land and property developer, has again rejected a takeover approach from Peel, arguing that its raised offer of close to £600 million still falls well short of the company's worth.
Peel lifted its all-cash bid on Tuesday to 177.5p a share, up from 172.5p, valuing Harworth at £599.77 million.
The Harworth board dismissed the revised terms as unanimously and unequivocally too low, and urged shareholders to take no action.
It also told any investors who had already accepted to withdraw, and warned them not to sell their shares to the bidder.
The board said the offer sat at a 17.4% discount to the company's net asset value of 214.8p a share at the end of June, a measure known as EPRA net disposal value that is widely used in the property sector.
It argued the bid failed to capture embedded value across the portfolio, including a pipeline of large-scale data centre sites and industrial and logistics developments.
Harworth accused Peel of timing its move to exploit a gap between the share price and the value of its assets, a dislocation it blamed on wider pressures on UK-listed property stocks.
The company said Peel also stood to gain about £30.7 million in stamp duty savings by buying the group rather than its properties directly.
Alongside the rejection, Harworth said it was targeting a conditional contract on a data centre site in the final quarter of this year.
It also announced the sale of a 40-acre site in St Helens, Merseyside, to Tritax Big Box Developments in line with book value.
Peel already controls 30% of Harworth.
