US funds press France to increase €10bn EDF buyout price
Several US funds are pushing the French state to raise its €10bn buyout offer to minority shareholders of energy utility EDF and asking France’s market regulator to recommend a price bump, adding to pressure from investors unhappy with the terms of the nationalisation.
The French government is moving to buy out the 16 per cent it does not already own in EDF, as the group grapples with production outages at its French nuclear reactors and soaring wholesale power prices in Europe, and gears up to build costly new plants.
The process reverses a 2005 privatisation and subsequent fall in the power company’s stock price since it was listed at €32 per share, leading to opposition to the €12 per share buyout price from some long-term investors, such as employee shareholders.
Vermeille told the FT the funds were not looking to derail the nationalisation, but pushing for more transparency around the process.
Some other shareholders are also calling for the price to be raised to at least €15 per share, such as employees who invested in the shares and own collectively about 1.5 per cent of EDF’s capital.
“Minority shareholders are being forced to sell at the worst time in EDF’s history,” said Martine Faure, a representative of the leftwing CGT union and chair of two employee shareholder funds.
French activist shareholder CIAM, which holds under 1 per cent of EDF, has also criticised the process.
“It’s clear that the price is not adequate when you see how the state has intervened and caused the share price to fall,” said CIAM co-founder Catherine Berjal. The AMF should be the one appointing an independent expert to review the offer, not EDF, Berjal added.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sarah White
