AMS AG re-entered the battle for Osram Licht AG with a 3.7 billion euros (US$4.14 billion) offer, days after a major shareholder rejected a lower bid by rivals for the German light and sensor maker.
Osram shares yesterday soared as much as 11 percent, following the weekend approach from AMS that values the target at 38.50 euros a share. That compares with the bid at 35 euros a share from private-equity firms Bain Capital and Carlyle Group that was thrown into jeopardy last week when top investor, Allianz Global Investors, rejected it as too low.
The new offer is in line with an earlier bid that fellow Austrian sensor maker AMS mooted, but then withdrew almost a month ago.
Osram “raised valid concerns in the past, and I think with the offer we provided them yesterday, we answered all their concerns,” AMS chief executive officer Alexander Everke said in a call with reporters yesterday. “We have been looking at Osram for a long time.”
Yesterday morning, AMS shares fell 8.7 percent in Zurich trading, while Osram traded at 35.09 euros in Frankfurt, Germany.
Osram became a takeover target after a series of profit warnings and a public spat over strategy with Siemens AG, which spun off the division in 2013. Its earnings have suffered because of the company’s exposure to the automotive industry, which accounts for more than half of its revenue.
Automakers and suppliers are grappling with shrinking demand in China and Europe, and the expensive transition to electric vehicles. Investors also lost confidence in the ability of CEO Olaf Berlien and management to turn the company around. The stock has lost more than half its value since peaking in early last year.
“This counter bid will test how keen the private-equity consortium is for the Osram asset as AMS has now secured financing to offer 10 percent more per share,” Morgan Stanley analyst Lucie Carrier said in a note.
If AMS were successful in its takeover attempt, it would sell off Osram’s digital division that makes lighting controls for use in horticultural and medical systems, among others, Carrier said, adding that the company would not touch Osram’s collective bargaining agreements for five years.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS