Irish Continental Group’s (ICG) chief executive Eamonn Rothwell is leading a €1.2 billion management buyout bid for the ferries group, almost 20 years after making a failed attempt to buy the business. It is being backed by a unit of US investment giant BlackRock. Rothwell (71), who owns 21.7 per cent of the business together with other senior managers, who hold a further 2 per cent of the stock, has bid €8 a share for ICG, representing a 28 per cent premium to the closing price on Friday. Independent members of the board, advised by investment bank PJT Partners (UK) Limited, intend to recommend the offer to shareholders, ICG said in a stock exchange announcement on Friday evening. The bid for the owner of Irish Ferries is being funded by €455 million of preferred equity which the management buyout (MBO) team would issue to BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) subsidiary. BNP Paribas Banco Santander have arranged €798 million of loans for the bidders. Goodbody Stockbrokers is advising the bidders. The other executives involved in the bid are David Ledwidge, Andrew Sheen and Declan Freeman. The management buyout team plan to cash in a third of their shares in ICG, for €90 million, and roll the rest into the highly-leveraged vehicle being used to carry out the purchase.Aer Lingus job cuts and Ryanair’s profits plunge - what is happening in the Irish aviation sector? Listen | 41:54“ICG has delivered a resilient performance and remains well positioned in its core markets. However, the ICG Group operates in competitive markets which continue to be affected by fuel cost volatility, inflationary pressures and broader trading uncertainty,” said Rothwell. “The acquisition provides ICG Shareholders with an opportunity to realise their investment in full and in cash at a significant premium to the share price.”The move comes 19 years after Rothwell first sought to lead a management buyout of the company. That was thwarted when then developer Liam Carroll and a consortium led by businessman Philip Lynch’s One51 and Doyle Shipping also each accumulated stakes and participated in a takeover struggle that ended in stalemate. Rothwell’s rivals, who were mostly interested in the potential development in ICG’s Dublin Port site, held under a long-term lease, were subsequently forced to sell their shares – crystallising large losses – during the financial crisis to pay down debt. Of all the key players, only Rothwell remains a shareholder in the group. The chief executive’s stake in the business has risen by close to 50 per cent over the past decade to reach 21.7 per cent, much of this driven as ICG spent more than €200 million buying back its own stock and cancelling the shares. Some of the increase was also down to stock awards and the exercise of share options.During the intervening period, ICG has been dogged by a weaker sterling exchange rate, which is a hangover from the 2016 Brexit vote, a share price mauling in 2018 amid delays in the delivery of the new-build WB Yeats ferry and technical issues with its Ulysses vessel, the Covid-19 pandemic and implementation of the UK-EU divorce deal in 2020.Company observers before the bid noted that the market had not fully rewarded ICG for some opportunistic moves it took by chasing duty-free sales and setting up a route between Dover and Calais after Brexit.ICG is now one of three Irish public companies subject to takeover proposals. PTSB shareholders are due to vote next Thursday on a €1.62 billion bid from Austria’s Bawag. Two US private equity firms, KKR and Energy Capital Partners, face a deadline of 5pm on Monday from the Irish Takeover Panel to make a bid for Dublin-based, but London-listed DCC.