Ferry News Archive
Finnlines’ investor sparked Grimaldi bid
Date: 16 Oct 2006 00:00 Source: Lloyds ListEmanuele Grimaldi’s decision to raise the Grimaldi Group’s stake in Finnlines to 46.2%, and with it to launch a full takeover bid for the Finnish ferry company, appears to have been prompted by an unsolicited approach from the second largest shareholder in Finnlines eager to sell at price level it regarded as favourable.
While the Grimaldi Group continues to decline comment on last week’s move pending a press conference in Naples tomorrow, reliable industry sources said the company had resisted the temptation to buy from several smaller shareholders eager to sell.
However, an approach from the Thominvest Group, eager to dispose of its 10.8% stake, forced Grimaldi’s hand.
Thominvest executives were not available for comment.
The development came as a surprise to the market and represented an abrupt reversal of Grimaldi’s stated strategy.
Mr Grimaldi vowed just six weeks before, after boosting his share in the company to 35.4% with the purchase of a further 4.9% stake, that this would be his last acquisition of shares in the the short sea specialist on the public market prior to a decision on a full public offering for the remaining shares.
As he put it at the time: “Now we have three years in which to analyse the company and the state of the market and decide whether or not to make a public offering.
“If I continued buying shares, it would only make it more difficult to go back.”
The sudden willingness of a number of shareholders to cash out of Finnlines prompted a rethink, however.
As for the €15.95-a-share offering price giving a total of € 349m ($408m) for the remaining shares, the sources suggested that, as an industrial investor with a long-term view of Finnlines’ potential in collaboration with his own operations, Mr Grimaldi’s view of the company’s value differed from that of an investor eager to cash in on a rise in the share price.
Though this would be the highest Mr Grimaldi has paid for shares in the company he has suggested in the past that he saw it as undervalued.
That view will perhaps have found some confirmation from the interim results for Finnlines released this week.
At €43m, operating profits for the first nine months were almost double the €23m registered in the same period last year.
The result was considerably better than anticipated and evidence that a revival may be under way after a period of distinct weakness.
At least on the basis of recent statements, Mr Grimaldi is unlikely to make many immediate changes at Finnlines in the event of his takeover bid proving successful.
He has been supportive of the existing management while stating many times his belief in the synergies to be had from a successful partnership with his own company.
In late August he cited “a project of industrial cooperation, commercial development and strategic alliance,” for his decision to build a stake in Finnlines.
As he described it then, the companies have “similar features and the co-operation between them will generate new logistics opportunities for their international clientele, linking Moscow with New York, Helsinki with Rio de Janeiro, Riga with Rome, always with a single bill of lading and consequently with one carrier responsible for the carriage of goods”.
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