Global Capital Markets

Story: Skandia managing director, Hans-Erik Andersson believes that several larger foreign investors are against Old Mutual’s offer, according to Dagens Industri. The paper reported that American Third Avenue is the only foreign shareholder to have openly opposed the deal and acquired more shares. Andersson said, however, that there are more shareholders than Third Avenue that have increased their stakes and several of them are larger. The paper wrote that if what the Skandia management says is true then there could be opposing shareholders with at least 25% of Skandia shares. Of these, 15% are already known and 3 % comes from the powers of attorney held by the Swedish shareholders association.
Andersson also stated that he still fully against a deal with Old Mutual and that he sees no industrial logic in it. He said that now Old Mutual is to finance the deal with loans, which could leave the South African company with huge debts that in turn may force it to sell off operations. Andersson also said that the current offer would not lead to a stable ownership as a deal with Skandia would make the new company a financial conglomerate which would tempt investors with hopes of breaking up the company structure.
Meanwhile, Dagens Nyheter reported that Andersson still deems the offer to be too low. He said that taking into account the initial indicative offer of SEK 45-48, the market development and Skandia’s development then the offer should be at least SEK 50 (EUR 5.19) per share. When asked why Skandia has not received further offers, Andersson said that further offers would likely build on the uncertain condition of immediate synergies. The paper reported that Skandia shares traded at SEK 43 (EUR 4.5) yesterday, SEK 1 (EUR 0.1) over Old Mutual’s offer.

Source: Dagens Industri, Dagens Nyheter
Value: EUR 3,300m (offer value)