Few hours before the deadline fixed by France’s financial regulator Amf, Investindustrial launched yesterday the long waited takeover offer on Club Méditerranée (download here the press release to Amf).
More in detail, the offer coming from the private equity fund led by Andrea Bonomi, has been launched on all the ordinary shares of the French touristic group and on all its outstanding financial convertible instruments (Oceane 2015).
Investindustrial is offering 21 euros per share and 22.41 euros per convertible bond. The deal represents a 22 percent premium to the existing year-old 17.50 euro-a-share offer by Chinese conglomerate Fosun International and French private equity firm Ardian through the newco Gallion Invest. So the offer values Club Med’s equity 790 million euros or 870 millions of enterprise value (including 80 millions of net financial debt). Club Med shares were suspended yesterday ahead of the announcement and last traded at 19.51 euros.
The offer is launched by the newco Global Resort, with the remainder held by South African entrepreneur Sol Kerzner, GP Investments and the management of Barcelona theme park operator PortAventura (the latter being controlled by Investindustrial). Global Resort will finance the offer with 550 milioni of equity and by a 240 million euros credit facility issued by Italian banks Unicredit and Intesa Sanpaolo.
Global Resort said it is acting in agreement with Strategic Holdings sarl, the investment veichle owned by the Bonomi family through its BI-Invest holding. The latter is the principal investor in Investindustrial’s funds. In the last few months Strategic Holdings boiught 3,556,439 Club Med shars on the market and now controls a 10.566% stake in Club Med’s shareholders’ capital (see here a previuos post of BeBeez). Strategic Sarl will transfer to Global Resort a maximum of 1,190,476 shares of Club Med.
Nonostante l’attuale management del Club Med, guidato da Henri Giscard d’Estaing (figlio dell’ex presidente francese Valery) si sia apertamente schierato per l’offerta di Fosun e Ardian, Bonomi nel corso di una conferenza stampa telefonica ieri ha detto che non si aspetta opposizioni da parte del governo di Parigi.
Il piano industriale predisposto per Club Med da Bonomi e dai suoi soci, tra cui figura anche il management di PortAventura (il parco tematico spagnolo controllato da Investindustrial), prevede investimenti per 484 milioni nell’arco dei prossimi 5 anni. Ora si attende solo l’ok dell’Amf al documento d’offerta, che dovrebbe arrivare al massimo in tre settimane e poi l’offerta potrà partire per concludersi nei primi giorni di settembre, E se ci fosse una contro-opa? «Speriamo di no», ha affermato Bonomi. «Ma siamo qui per vincere e non per partecipare», ha concluso Bonomi.
Il titolo Club Med ieri è stato sospeso in Borsa in attesa del comunicato di Investindustrial. L’ultimo trade è stato chiuso a 19,51 euro per azione.
