Steadfast has attracted a $6-a-share takeover offer from Amwins Group and Dragoneer Investment Group, valuing the company at $7.7 billion.

The “conditional, non-binding and indicative” offer, through a scheme of arrangement, would represent a 51.9% premium to Steadfast’s last closing price of $3.95.

The broking group’s board has determined it is in shareholders’ best interests to enter into a process deed with the consortium and has agreed to confidentiality and exclusivity terms to enable the proposal to progress, a statement says.

“The Steadfast board confirms that, subject to reaching agreement on acceptable terms of a binding scheme implementation deed, it intends to unanimously recommend that Steadfast shareholders vote in favour of the potential transaction” in the absence of a superior proposal and subject to the views of an independent expert, it says.

Amwins and Dragoneer intend to act jointly to pursue the transaction, with Dragoneer acquiring Steadfast’s retail brokerage business and Amwins acquiring its underwriting agencies.

The process deed grants the parties a period of eight weeks’ due diligence.

Amwins is a wholesale insurance distribution business headquartered in the US, placing more than $US49 billion ($69.6 billion) of premium annually across more than 36,000 retail agency relationships and 1300 carrier and managing general agent relationships. Investment firm Dragoneer is a major Amwins shareholder.

The $7.7 billion valuation includes equity of $6.67 billion, net debt and non controlling interests.