Alcoa CEO says would hate to raise bid for Alcan

NEW YORK, June 11 (Reuters) Alcoa Inc. Chief Executive Alain Belda indicated on Monday he was reluctant to raise his company's hostile $28.4 billion bid for Canadian rival Alcan Inc.

''At the moment, we think this is a full price,'' he said, speaking on the sidelines of a JPMorgan conference in New York.

''I'd hate to have to go higher than that at this point.'' Alcan has rejected Alcoa's offer, saying the price is too low.

Alcoa is offering $58.60 in cash and 0.4108 of a share for each Alcan share. Based on Alcoa's stock price on Monday morning, the blended value of the offer was around $74.86 a share.

Alcan's U.S. traded shares were trading down 42 cents at $82.87 on the New York Stock Exchange. Its Canadian shares were down 50 cents at C$88.00.

Belda told Reuters that Alcan's stock has ''overshot, but will come back.'' ''We'll let it play out ... It happens in every deal. I am confident it will be achieved,'' he said.

He said he believes Alcan's shares were already trading with a takeover premium built-in when Alcoa made its takeover offer last month.

Before the bid was announced, there was speculation for months that both Alcan and Alcoa were takeover targets.

Alcan is expected to unveil its strategy in the coming weeks.

Its options include trying to remain independent, seeking a white knight or merger partner to step in with a friendly competing bid, or even taking a takeover run at Alcoa.

There have been reports that big international miners such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto are interested in looking at Alcan.

Alcoa has said it expects to be able to squeeze around $1 billion in cost savings out of the deal.

Belda said at the conference that when the company was still having friendly discussions about the possibility of a deal with Alcan in November, the companies had considered a range of cost savings scenarios between $800 million and $1.5 billion.

Shares of Alcoa were down 19 cents to $39.47 in NYSE trading on Monday morning.

($1=$1.06 Canadian) REUTERS SBA HT2140