Abrdn PLC (LSE:ABDN)’s planned £1.5bn takeover of online share trading platform Interactive Investor is being held up by a shortage of paper for the documents required.
Sky News reported that a scheduled shareholder ballot to approve the deal has been delayed until mid-March because of the problem.
Under UK takeover rules, companies must send out paper versions of documents to its investors and abdrn has more than a million shareholders.
Having originally intended to schedule the vote before its next results, the fund manager now will send out the forms two weeks after.
An abrdn spokesman told Sky: "We would have liked to get the shareholder circular out a little earlier but have had to work around the paper supply problems as we are required to write to over a million shareholders."
Global supply chain shortages have increased waiting times for certain types of paper to 12 weeks.