PartnerRe rejected the offer of Exor, which he had put on the plate 6,4 billion dollars (130 euros per share, with a 16% premium) to acquire the Bermuda reinsurance company, a public company owned by the Vanguard, Franklyn Resources and Black Rock funds. This was announced today by PartnerRe itself, also confirming the project of merger with Axis Capital.
The company also said the new terms of the merger agreements will allow it to pay PartnerRe shareholders a one-time dividend of $11,5 per share before the merger closes.
“Over the last three weeks – clarified the chairman Jean-Paul Montupet – we have strongly engaged in negotiations with Exor and have made a scrupulous evaluation of the various aspects of the offer, including the price. In the negotiation, Exor clearly said it would not change the price. For this reason, the board concluded that Exor's proposal significantly undervalued PartnerRe and that there was no possibility of arriving at a better proposal. As a result, we rejected the offer."
Exor's offer came as a surprise last month with the consent of the Board of directors of the Agnelli safe and could count, in addition to the liquidity on hand (523 million) and the support of bond loans up to 3 billion, also approved in April, also on the at least two billion dollars collected with the sale of real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, a deal managed by Goldman Sachs.
But the same US investment bank has been involved since January in assisting Axis Capital in the acquisition of PartnerRe itself. Goldman Sachs, therefore, found itself assisting Exor in the sale of Cushman & Wakefield by supplying the Turin-based financial company with part of the money needed to steal Partner Re from one of its clients.
Early afternoon the share on the stock exchange of Exor earns 1,9%, a 42,09 euro.
