Italian Bonomi family firmly reacted yesterday to requests from the French market regulator AMF seeking clarity on the intentions of the new big investor Strategic Holdings sarl in Club Méditerranée shareholders’ capital together with its decision of extending to next June 6th the deadline for shareholders of Club Méditerranée to decide on French private equity firm Ardian and Chinese conglomerate Fosun International‘s 558 million euros takeover bid (see a previous post of BeBeez).
Strategic Holdings sarl, an investment veichle 100 pct owned by the Bonomi family’s BI-Invest holding, has been piling Club Med’s shares since the beginning of last April and has now a 10.655 pct stake in the French holiday group listed at Euronext Paris.
Strategic Holdings has said that it didn’t rule out launching a takeover bid on Club Med’s shares together with some funds indirectly controlled (i.e. Investindustrial private equity), if Ardian and Fosun’s offer hadn’t succeeded (see a previous post of BeBeez). However, after AMF’s requests, both Strategic Holdings and Investindustrial decided yesterday to accelerate their timetable (download here Strategic Holdings’ press release and Investindustrial’s press release).
More in detail, Investindustrial explained that the fund “was not interested in launching an offer for Club Méditerranée given the existence of an outstanding tender offer for the company with the support of its management and Board of Directors, and without being aware of the position of the company’s key shareholders. However, the AMF’s decision to apply Article 223-32 of the AMF General Regulations has substantially modified the situation and has forced Investindustrial to decide to engage the means necessary for the launching of a possible tender offer for Club Méditerranée, in order to avoid the risk of being blocked from considering a possible offer at a later stage”.
While Startegic Holdings explained that “In this context, Strategic Holdings could consider teaming up with Investindustrial, as a minority shareholder in a private investment company led by Investindustrial. In such case, it would then be in concert with Investindustrial”.
The new takeover bid would be launched however only after an adequate due diligence process for which 5 weeks’ time will be neeeded and only with Club Med’s Board approval. This means that Investindustrial’s takeover bid would be launched, if it will be launched, only after the current takeover bid is closed.
“Such an offer would only be filed after the completion of satisfactory due diligence based on access to the same information as that made available to the bidders behind the current offer, including all information available from the management associated to the bidders, to be up-dated as at the due diligence period”, Investindustrial stressed in its press release.
Club Med shares closed at 19.16 euro yesterday in Paris still well above the 17.50 euro per share bid price so that Club Med had a market capitalization of around 640 million euros.
