The Loctite board, which had rejected Henkel's previous bid of $57.75 a share, met yesterday and accepted the higher bid, valued at about $1.27 billion.

The bid, valued at £740m, failed.

Mr. Davis indicated yesterday that he was prepared to take his bid, now valued at $6.2 billion, to the shareholders.

The group was successful in acquiring Univision with a bid valued at $13.7 billion (USD).

Some 100 unsolicited bids valued at $364 billion have already been made worldwide, according to Thomson Financial Securities Data.

General Electric began a bid, then valued at $1.7 billion, for Plessey in December 1985.

As of 2012, Coinplex has 156 member dealers posting more than 56,000 bids, valued at $538 million.

The move came two months after Chevron won the backing of Unocal's board for a cash-and-stock bid valued at $16.8 billion.

In 1988, however, there were 168 hostile bids valued at a total of $222 billion.

Since January, bids valued at $72.6 billion have been announced, according to statistics of the M&A DataBase.