Private equity firm PPF Investments will put out a tender offer for Romexterra Bank shares on Wednesday, addressed to all the bank's shareholders. It offers a better price than Cyprus-based Demera's offer, preferred by the bank's management and the main shareholders. After the offer has been concluded, Demera is supposed to transfer the shares to Hungarian bank MKB.
PPF investments, a private equity firm registered in the Jersey Island, known as a tax haven, will offer on its own behalf and on behalf of its investors a price of 8 RON/share, 30% higher than what Demera is willing to pay. The Romexterra shareholders that have subscribed during Demera's offer so far have therefore made a bad deal, as they cannot undo what they did.
Petromservice, a company that is said to have businessman Sorin Ovidiu Vantu behind it, on Friday decided during a General Meeting of Shareholders to sell its 0.6% in Romexterra.
Romexterra has about 100,000 individual shareholders who own 77.13% of the total shares of the bank.
The higher price seems surprising, given that the Czechs will not be able to buy the controlling interests, which Demera has secured already, according to Romexterra representatives. What's more, the Czechs do not even know the detailed financial situation of the bank.
Market sources say that even though they expressed interest in offering a better price to Romexterra shareholders, the bank's management did not allow them to conduct a due diligence and denied them access to the bank's shareholder registry so as to be able to inform the shareholders by mail about a better offer in terms of price. Romexterra's management could not be reached for comment on the PPF's counteroffer yesterday.
Demera's offer that started two months ago is supposed to end on Saturday, September 23, while the Czechs' offer should last until Friday, October 6. PPF Investments is working with Voicu&Filipescu law firm for its offer, with the collection of the shares to be handled by the Raiffeisen Bank's branches in several cities. The Czechs' bid puts Romexterra at 110 million euros.
The offer of the Czech group came up amid dissatisfaction on the part of a number of shareholders of the bank with the manner in which Romexterra's management had negotiated the sale and the price they felt was low compared with the actual value. They formed "an initiative group" that supposedly got together 17% of bank's shares to set a joint strategy for the shares they own.
The group includes Iosif Pop, former Banca Transilvania chairman and the owner of the IMO Group of Cluj and Dafora Medias, controlled by businessman Gheorghe Calburean.
The representatives of this group had said they had reached an agreement on the sale of their shares to PPF.
The offer PPF put out is not conditioned to attaining a specific number of Romexterra shares, although at first PPF wanted to buy only if it could get 20% of the bank.
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