Difficulty securing enough paper to mail to each of its investors has forced abrdn to delay its £1.5bn takeover of interactive investors, Sky News has reported.

Under UK takeover rules, firms must send a physical copy of the documents to each shareholder before a vote can be conducted.

A combination of supply chain issues and the need to source more than a million copies for its shareholders has meant abrdn has delayed its vote on the takeover to mid-March.

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It had originally hoped to hold the vote before its results on 1 March.

A spokesperson for abrdn said: "We would have liked to get the shareholder circular out a little earlier but have had to work around the paper supply problems as we are required to write to over a million shareholders."