The GEA’s cocoa trip to Abu Dhabi to meet with IHC –International Holding Company, the investment company of the royal family of that country–, is a new move in the game of chess that began a year ago between the Group Gilinski and the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño to see who gets several jewels from the paisa crown.
The novelty of this move – the trip to Abu Dhabi – is that unlike all the previous ones, in which the banker from Cali Jaime Gilinski is the one who has launched the attacks, on both sides, this time it seems to be the GEA the one who decided to take the strategic initiative.
Gilinski, it should be remembered, in alliance with IHC, whose president is the Arab sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, has raised seven takeover bids, by GEA companies and three of them by Nutresa; while the Arabs, at their peril, launched a juicier one last month. On the other hand, a smear campaign has been deployed once morest the GEA administrators and criminal complaints and proceedings have been filed before the superintendencies once morest the heads of the paisa conglomerate.
Meanwhile, and throughout a whole year, those of the GEA have applied defense strategies, have not agreed to sell the shares of the companies and have had to make maneuvers in the meetings to avoid the seizure of the Gilinskis.
But now, it seems, the GEA took the lead. The only thing that has been made public regarding the trip is the version broadcast by W radio, this Wednesday, and the separate statements from Nutresa, Argos and Sura correcting some details of what the station said.
The W said words more words less that the GEA leaders traveled to Abu Dhabi and met with the IHC Arabs to ask them to revive the takeover bid for Nutresa. However, Sura, Argos and Nutresa issued statements in which they confirmed that the trip did take place, but denied that the reason for the trip was to “recover the OPA”, and Sura in particular pointed out that the invitation to the meeting had been on the initiative of the Arabs.
With these ingredients on the table, it might be said that the most significant thing regarding the meeting is that the Arabs and the GEA entered into a direct dialogue without the presence of the Gilinskis. And that can have an impact on the business.
If for the Arabs, as has been said, the primary interest is to stay with Nutresa, perhaps they will think that it does not matter to them if they buy it with the help of Gilinski or acquire it themselves directly.
If that were the scenario, it would not be unreasonable to think that the GEA might sell the food conglomerate. It should be remembered that the fact that it was initially considered a hostile takeover is what has made the process more difficult.
In a direct negotiation with the Arabs, eventually the GEA might handle castling in a different way, and thus avoid that with a ‘master move’ on the stock market —like the one Gilinski has attempted— they would be left with the more than 100 companies of the so-called Antioquia Business Group.
In other words, the GEA might prevent a bank (the largest in the country) and a cement and concrete producer (the largest in Latin America and the fourth in the United States) from having to buy a ‘cookie factory’. .
Of course that move doesn’t work for Gilinski. The banker seems to continue to have a good relationship with IHC, since last week he arranged a meeting for them with three of Gustavo Petro’s ministers at the Casa de Nariño, in which the Arabs spoke of their interest in investing in various sectors of the country.
But it might also be thought that Gilinski does not seem to be on a very good footing with the Arabs if one takes into account that following eight takeover bids, in the last of which the offer was doubled, they have not been able to buy Nutresa or the other GEA companies. .
The GEA’s visit to the Arabs, which was exclusively revealed by the W and on which the FM later insisted, still lacks key details to be known. Some are just anecdotal, like the hotel where they stayed, which EL COLOMBIANO was able to find out was not the Four Seasons in Abu Dhabi, as some have said.
And other really fundamental ones like, what did the Arabs and the GEA talk regarding? And how can this dialogue impact the business of purchasing Nutresa and other companies?
