Analysts: Marine Harvest Scotland price 25% higher than expected

Cooke Aquaculture's move into European salmon farming, with the £122.5 million ($203 million/€147.2 million) acquisition of Marine Harvest's Shetland and Orkney operations, was a surprise to some.

"The buyer was surprising to most," Kolbjorn Giskeodegaard, senior analyst at Nordea Markets, told IntraFish. "Equally surprising was the price, which is 25 percent higher than what we had expected Marine Harvest would get -- and 50 percent higher than the lowest estimate I have seen."

He believes the high price is interesting, in that it will result in higher dividends for Marine Harvest.

"I