Cairo relaunches at the photo finish on RCS and the stock exchange celebrates. On the last day to improve his previous Ops (public exchange offer) on RCS, the company that publishes leading newspapers such as Corriere della Sera and Gazzetta dello Sport, Urbano Cairo presented a new proposal based on three crucial points : the increase in the economic offer, the merger between the two publishing groups and a new business plan. Now the ball passes to the competing consortium – formed by Andrea Bonomi and the historical partners of RCS (Mediobanca, Pirelli, Della Valle and Unipol) – which has a week to decide what to do, but whose initial takeover bid proposal was considered positive on a general level by the RCS board of directors but incongruous in terms of price.
The central point of Cairo's new offer is obviously the merger between its group and RCS with an exchange of between 0,16 and 0,17 Cairo Communication shares for each RCS share. This means that Cairo values each Rcs share at 0,70 euro, i.e. roughly the same as the tender offer of the competing consortium and much more than its previous offer (0,50 euro per share) but above all it plays the merger card.
It is no coincidence that the Stock Exchange sensed the news in advance and closed the session valuing both the Rcs share (which closed up by 4,135 at 0,78 euro per share) and that of Cairo Communication (+5,85% ).
The next few days therefore promise to be very important, because the takeover bid starts on Monday to conclude on July 15, a deadline with which the Cairo OPS will also be aligned. But the twists aren't over yet and the market is betting on a battle between the two teams.
