BERLIN (Reuters) – European competition authorities have given their unconditional approval to a bid by a Volkswagen-led consortium to buy car rental company Europcar, the German carmaker said on Wednesday, confirming reports from Reuters last week.
The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) has set June 10 as the closing date for the initial offer period. If the number of investors is insufficient, the period can be extended for another 10 days, Volkswagen said.
Volkswagen and its consortium partners, asset manager Attestor Limited and Dutch mobility group Pon Holdings BV, are offering 0.50 euro per share for Europcar, plus 0.01 euro per share if 90% of shareholders accept the offer.
Investors representing 68% of Europcar have already agreed to tender their shares, which would give the consortium control of the car rental group under French law.
The consortium is aiming for a squeeze so it has more leverage to make strategic decisions, but crossing the 90% threshold is not essential, Christian Dahlheim, chief executive of Volkswagen Financial Services, told Reuters.
“We believe car-sharing is important from a customer perspective, but can only be operated profitably when it complements a car rental business,” said Christian Dahlheim, who clarified that Europcar would need several hundreds of millions of euros in investments, financed by its own cash flow, to modernize its IT infrastructure.
Volkswagen’s 2030 strategy, announced last year, predicts that software and services will drive growth in the global automotive market, which is expected to more than double in value to 5 trillion euros by the end of the decade.
(Report Victoria Waldersee and Christoph Steitz, French version Augustin Turpin, edited by Matthieu Protard)
Copyright © 2022 Thomson Reuters
Are you following this action?
Receive all the information about EUROPCAR MOBILITY in real time: