2024-04-15 11:10:00
The B&C Group is looking for strategic partners for its core holdings in Lenzing, Semperit and AMAG and would accept that its holdings would fall below the 50 percent threshold. The head of the supervisory board of the B&C Group and board member of the B&C Private Foundation, Wolfgang Hofer, announced this on Monday. “We are gradually working on it and we will certainly continue to take appropriate action in the next few years,” said Hofer.
According to Hofer, the companies in the B&C Group have been facing “a rough wind with sometimes strong gusts” in recent years. Many events since 2020 have had a disruptive effect. “The golden age of globalization is over,” says Hofer. One should no longer wait for an upswing and postpone things until the future; rather, every strategy should be questioned. For B&C, this means “that we are giving up our decades-long dogma that we always have to hold 50 plus 1 in a core shareholding.” This applies to all three core investments.
However, there are “neither considerations nor intentions or plans” to change the stake in the holding itself, said Hofer. “That wouldn’t make any economic sense either.” The B&C Group has a very mixed portfolio. “If I want to invest in a mixed way, I’ll buy an index, but not shares in B&C.”
All three companies, especially AMAG and Lenzing, have to make investments “that cannot always be financed by the companies.” Hofer said his preference would be for strategic partners who remain invested for the long term and not for financial investors.
There is no precise figure as to how many shares the B&C Group intends to sell. However, the level of participation must be so high that the companies “have their epicenter in Austria,” said Thomas Zimpfer, managing director of the B&C Group and AMAG supervisory board member. “And then you’re somewhere in the 25 plus range.”
There are no concrete discussions yet, but AMAG, Semperit and Lenzing are interesting companies and they have received “an endless number of contacts and requests for discussions” over the years, said Hofer. “We are now increasingly accepting the discussions initiated.” The interested parties would present the advantages of a partnership. “We’ll then evaluate this pitch phase – but we’re not any further ahead.”
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