Eight bidders not selected to purchase Westar Energy will be able to submit new bids based on a settlement agreement reached this week in a class action lawsuit filed in July in Shawnee County.

Westar and Great Plains Energy settled with plaintiffs in all three lawsuits filed against the companies regarding the proposed acquisition of Westar by GPE, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week.

Although most of the settlements related to additional disclosure information added to the companies’ proxy statement, one key point reopened the bidding process for Westar, said attorney Derrick Farrell, a lawyer for the plaintiffs with the Delaware office of Faruqi & Faruqi.

The settlement agreement required Westar and GPE waive standstill provisions, he said, which are put in place in most bidding processes to maintain confidentiality during a sale.

The company, in this case Westar, will often reveal confidential information during the sale.

“You don’t want some potential purchaser to get inside information and then trade on it,” Farrell said. “One of the things they do to protect against that is they have a standstill provision, (which says) ‘hey, we’re going to give you confidential information and you can’t go buy stock in the company without our permission.”

But a “little more unique” provision during the bidding process for Westar also waived the potential purchasers’ rights to come in and make a higher offer “even if one of these people was willing to pay double the deal price,” he said, adding that they were prohibited from even asking if they could make a higher offer.

Those in the class action lawsuit wanted that provision waived so if one of the eight bidders wanted to come in and sweeten the pot, they could do so.

“Those provisions have been dropped so there are no contractual prohibitions now on these eight potential purchasers,” Farrell said.

Andy Pusateri, a utilities analyst for Edward Jones, said he thinks it is unlikely waiving those prohibitions from making new offers will start a bidding war for Westar.

“I don’t see a very likely possibility that we’ll get a ton of interest from many other companies,” he said. “I don’t think all other seven parties are going to come back in because Great Plains did offer a pretty significant premium.”

In general, he said, there aren’t many bidding wars in utility mergers and acquisitions; in recent years, he could only think of one.

“We don’t see a lot of bidding wars for utility businesses, especially given that Westar put themselves on the block and all of these other parties had a chance to bid,” Pusateri said.

“I can’t point to many other bidding wars just because valuations have been so high that it’s tough to really get involved in a bidding war when you’re already paying a significant premium for somebody’s assets.”

Westar spokeswoman Gina Penzig confirmed that companies can ask to submit a counter-offer, but also said Westar Energy doesn’t expect that to occur.

“First of all, we feel like we selected for our shareholders, our customers in the community, the best deal that was proposed,” she said. “Also, we think the parties put forth their best offer in the beginning.”

Should an offer come in, Penzig said Westar’s board would have a duty to consider it.