He approaches the closing on Friday 23 April of the takeover bid on Creval e after days of uncertainty, the road for Crédit Agricole Italia seems clearly downhill. Decisive the last tweak made to the offer, which granted the shareholders the extra 30 cents that were previously recognized only upon reaching 90% of subscriptions, bringing the total price to 12,5 euros.
To understand what could happen you need to do some math. Yesterday the French bank arrived at 37,9% of the share capital of Credito Valtellinese, with a leap of more than 15 points compared to the 22,6% of the previous day. Approximately 10,5 million shares were placed in a single day, for a total of approximately 26 million. In reality, however, the membership fee has already exceeded 52%, given that the institute had already made it known that it had received commitments from 27,2% of the capital, to which is added a 2,5% stake bought in blocks. There will still be time until tomorrow, Friday 23 April, to move from commitments to formal adhesions, but after the agreement with Dumont and other funds, it is very probable that in the next 24 hours a significant share of equity investments.
At this point, the percentage of acceptances that Agricole will be able to obtain will be fundamental because the post-tender takeover scenarios will depend on it, even if success is already in the box and the bidder will be able to legitimately exercise control over Creval.
If the accessions should not reach the minimum threshold indicated of 66,7% Crédit Agricole Italia could in any case proceed with the purchase of shares on the Stock Exchange to try to reach the desired level. However, as Antonella Olivieri points out in Il Sole 24 Ore, however, "purchases made within six months of the conclusion of the offer at prices higher than the offer price would trigger the adjustment for all the securities delivered".
If instead the 66,7% target were to be achieved, the French bank would also ensure control of the extraordinary shareholders' meeting which would pave the way for the merger between Credit Agricole Italia and Creval while above 90% could trigger the delisting.
However, there is also a fourth option to consider. Crédit Agricole Italia could decide in extremis to implement a “reverse merger”, that is to say "a merger of the French bank into the listed Creval, to find itself on the list", underlines Repubblica, a hypothesis which however at the moment remains remote, also due to the costs it would entail.
