LEADING shareholders in GCap Media are pushing for Charles Allen’s Global Radio to reverse into the owner of Classic FM to break the impasse over his rejected takeover offer.

The proposal could make Allen, the former ITV chief executive, think twice before raising his 190p cash bid that was swiftly knocked back by GCap’s board without consulting investors.

“We want to be part of the company’s future or the price to be higher,” said one investor. “If Global reverses into GCap, we would be willing to accept this level as we could retain the shares.

“The two companies together offer huge synergy benefits and it seems difficult for Global to come up with a cash price that works. An obvious solution is to get the two groups together into a quoted entity.”

It would give Global, which is privately owned by Irish investors, currency for further acquisitions. Patrick Yau at Ingenious Securities thinks £15m of cost savings could be made by combining the pair.

However, the stock market has fallen out of love with consumer media and Global, which already owns the Heart and Galaxy stations, is thought to prefer attempting to restructure the radio industry in private.

And Allen still remembers the tough time he had at the hands of financial institutions in his final years at the helm of ITV.

Analysts think 210p may be too hard to refuse. GCap’s most influential shareholder, Daily Mail and General Trust, chased away interest at that level from bidder Providence Equity Partners in late 2006.

The market has since declined and DMGT’s stance may change as its new chief executive, Martin Morgan, prepares to take the reins. GCap’s largest shareholders are Schroders and Fidelity.

Allen has meetings planned with major investors this week before deciding whether to increase his offer. He opted to pursue GCap after Global was beaten by German magazine group H Bauer in the auction for Emap’s radio stations.

Meanwhile, new GCap boss Fru Hazlitt will unveil her turn-round strategy in early February – once she has returned from honeymoon. She is expected to outline plans to find more online revenues, reduce spending on unprofitable digital stations, and make cuts at its 47 stations outside London.

For part of the programming schedule, GCap chairman Rich-ard Eyre is a fan of networking more shows centrally from London and inserting news bulletins and traffic locally.

He said: “If you aggregated, say, 25 salaries and asked yourself could we now put in a really well-known celebrity presenter and still save some money, the answer is probably yes.”

Media regulator Ofcom recently loosened rules on the amount of programming that must be locally produced.

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