MILAN (Reuters) – A buyout bid launched by the Benetton family and U.S. investment fund Blackstone for Italy’s Atlantia has fallen just short of the required 90% threshold for the deal to proceed as the deadline to take up the offer closed on Friday.
The bidders, combined under a vehicle named Schema Alfa, set a total threshold of 90% for the offer to be valid and also trigger the company’s delisting.
Including the stake already owned by the Benetton family, they gained take-up of 87.35% of shares, according to a Reuters calculation, based on preliminary data from Italy’s bourse.
There was no immediate comment from the bidders on how they intended to proceed.
In October an attempt by the Della Valle brothers to buy out other shareholders in Italian fashion group Tod’s failed when their takeover offer also fell below the targeted 90% ownership threshold. The Della Valle family is now weighing whether to push ahead with a proposed de-listing of the group.
The enterprise value of the Atlantia deal was around 54 billion euros based on Atlantia’s debt level at the end of last year. That makes it the fourth biggest deal worldwide announced so far this year, according to Refinitiv data.
Atlantia’s shares closed at 22.74 euros on Friday, just below the 23 euro per share Schema Alfa offered to pay.
The Benettons launched the bid with Blackstone in April after they rejected an approach by investment funds Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and Brookfield to acquire Atlantia and hand its motorway concessions to Florentino Perez’s Spanish construction group ACS.
(Reporting by Elisa Anzolin; Writing by Keith Weir; Editing by Agnieszka Flak)
