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PARIS, December 20 (Reuters) – The Bolloré group BOLL.PA announced on Monday that it had received an offer from Switzerland’s MSC, a specialist in sea freight, for its transport and logistics activities in Africa on the basis of an enterprise value of 5.7 billion euros.
Vincent Bolloré’s group has granted exclusivity to MSC until March 31, 2022 with a view to a possible promise to purchase.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused shortages of container ships and congestion at ports at a time of very high consumer spending, pushing freight rates to record highs. This prompted the big shipping companies to buy out land services.
In this context, the Bolloré group was unable to cope with the investments implied by increased competition in Europe, but also from newcomers from China and the Middle East, said a source familiar with the question.
The French government is likely to scrutinize the transaction because the infrastructures controlled by the Bolloré entity are considered strategic.
“The case is on track,” said the source, adding that Bolloré warned the French government before announcing the potential transaction.
The sale of its African assets will deprive the family group, valued at 12.9 billion euros on the market, of a large part of its historical activities and should now make the participation in Vivendi VIV.PA the center of gravity. of the group.
The group says it has been present for more than half a century in Africa, where its subsidiary Bolloré Africa Logistics is presented as the leader in transport and logistics and employs nearly 21,000 people in 47 countries.
Bolloré thus operates terminals, via concessions, in 42 ports on the African continent, in particular in Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Gabon and the Congo. It also has maritime agencies and takes care of the administrative and customs procedures of its customers to transport their goods.
Bolloré also operates three rail concessions in West Africa.
The global transport and logistics activity is by far the main pole of the Bolloré group, behind the communication which is essentially based on the participation in Vivendi.
VIV.PA. In the third quarter of 2021, it achieved a turnover of 1.9 billion euros, out of the 5.1 billion of the group as a whole.
Bolloré says it will retain an “important presence” in Africa no matter what, notably via Canal +, presented as the leading pay-TV operator in French-speaking Africa and a major shareholder of MultiChoice, the leader in pay-TV in English-speaking Africa.
(Report Mathieu Rosemain, Gwénaëlle Barzic and Bertrand Boucey, written by Camille Raynaud, edited by Matthieu Protard)