THE Business Secretary has dismissed concerns over speculators buying up shares to swing the vote in the hostile bid to take over Worcestershire firm GKN.

Melrose succeeded in its hostile bid to take over Redditch headquartered GKN for £8.1 billion after securing the backing of the engineering giant’s shareholders.

A total of 52.43 per cent investor votes were cast in favour of the deal going ahead - above the 50 per cent plus one share threshold.

Melrose’s victory brings to a close a bitter battle that has raged since January.

Greg Clark said investors who sold up in recent weeks had chosen effectively not to back the company’s management.

Public companies are “constantly under scrutiny” from alternative managements “who say they can do a better job” and no firm is “immune”, he said.

Mr Clark also dismissed claims by former defence secretary Lord Heseltine that other countries would block such a takeover. The Tory peer has called for the deal to be stopped on national security grounds.

Lord Heseltine is “not right that other countries do not have a similar approach”, Mr Clark told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“Our practice is very consistent with those of other competitors,” he added.

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, a former business secretary, said that Melrose’s victory was only secured “through votes from short-term speculators”, a reference to the large number of hedge funds that make up GKN’s share register.

Mr Clark said: “Those shareholders that bought their shares very recently of course bought them from other shareholders that chose not in effect to back the continuing management."

The Government has a statutory responsibility to consider whether the merger gives rise to public interest concerns.

GKN has a history that dates back to the 1900s and was instrumental in wartime manufacturing.