	taft tfb stock rises on proposal taft broadcasting co stock rose almost three points today as its vice chairman and an investment group proposed to sweeten a takeover offer for the company however several arbitragers said they would shy away from the stock at its current price levels since it is unclear how high bidding for the company would go and whether the company would agree to a takeover there are too many uncertainties said one arbitrager taft stock rose to dudley taft taft vice chairman and narragansett capital inc said they sent a letter to the taft board stating they were committed to pursuing uisition of the broadcast company and were prepared to negotiate a transaction in excess of dlrs per share the company responded that the proposal would be submitted to the board of directors but that no decisions have yet been made on a sale of the company someone s betting this company will go for dlrs per share said one arbitrager arbitragers said the stock is a risky buy at current levels unless an offer was accepted in the dlr per share range they said to make an arbitrage investment at this level would be chancy since it will take a long time for any transaction to be completed because of regulatory approvals necessary for the broadcast properites taft earlier rejected a dlr per share or billion dlr bid from the investment group the company said it rejected the bid as inadequate based on advice of goldman sachs and co its financial adviser it said it would consider alternatives such as restructuring arbitragers speculated a bidding war may erupt for taft which has two large shareholders in an investment group led by robert bass and carl lindner chairman of american financial corp the bass group holds pct of taft and lindner holds pct the taft family which founded the company almost years ago has about pct lindner last week told the securities and exchange commission he may be interested in making a bid for taft i could see if things got really crazy that it might go for dlrs per share said one arbitrager but he speculated it probably would not even be taken over for more than a price in the s another speculated that lindner might bid but he speculated the investor would not really be interested in running the company lindner was unavailable for comment dennis mcalpine an analyst with oppenheimer and co said he had speculated the company might be considering a leveraged buyout ideally you d have to break this thing up to satisfy all the interests involved he said adding the two largest shareholders might be interested in pieces of taft he said the highest takeover price he calculated for the company has been about dlrs per share but that the highest estimates on wall street have been about he said the latter would be based on more optimistic expectations for the broadcast industry reuter 
