Ardian, Fosun give up on Club Med

The Ardian/Fosun team, which was bidding for the business via holding company Gaillon Invest, decided to shelve its bid following the French regulator's approval of the Investindustrial offer. The board of Club Med had approved the counter-offer two weeks ago.

Investindustrial, via the holding company Global Resorts, offered €21 per share and €22.41 per convertible bond. The offer exceeded that made by Gaillon by more than 20%, with Ardian and Fosun having offered €17.5 per share and €18.79 per convertible bond.

Global Resorts' offer values Club Med at around €786m, easily surpassing the €557m valuation reached with Gaillon's bid a year ago.

Global Resorts would acquire a 90% stake in Club Med. Investindustrial owner Andrea Bonomi already owns a 10% stake in the business through Strategic Holdings, an investment vehicle controlled by his Luxembourg-based family office BI-Invest.

The long battle for Club Med should finally be winding down. Ardian and Fosun have suffered a series of setbacks since announcing plans to offer €17 per share to Club Med shareholders back in May last year. They later revised their bid to €17.5, an offer welcomed by the company's board at the end of June 2013.

However, in September last year the potential takeover was pushed back until March 2014 at the earliest, following appeals made by two minority shareholder groups against the regulator's decision to greenlight Gaillon's takeover bid.

On top of this, in May of this year Italian holding Edizione (owned by the Benetton family) reneged on its pledge to sell its stake in Club Med to Gaillon, prompting a threat of legal action by the potential acquirer.

Gaillon issued an open letter to Edizione that stated the Italian holding company's earlier decision to sell its 2% stake was final, seeing as Edizione had formally agreed to sell its shares and convertible bonds in a letter sent to the Club Med chairman on 26 June 2013.

In a penultimate setback, it was revealed earlier this year that Bonomi's BI-Invest had gradually built up a 6.5% stake in Club Med, with a view to eventually garner a 10% shareholding. The move prompted Ardian and Fosun to release a statement warning Club Med shareholders that Gaillon's takeover offer remained the most attractive on the table.

The last straw came at the beginning of July, when Investindustrial tabled its bid for Club Med with an offer 22% higher than Gaillon's.

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• Topics
• France
• Consumer
• France
• Ardian (formerly Axa PE)
• Investindustrial
• Take Private