White Knight (Economy)
White Knight is a company called on the stock markets that comes to the aid of the takeover candidate in the event of a planned hostile takeover , the counterpart is the Black Knight . The Black Knight is an investor in company takeovers who wants to buy up a company against the will of its management. In this case, one speaks of a hostile takeover.
The help can range from support in the defensive battle to a union or takeover. Such a procedure can be in the interests of the target company if the White Knight offers a higher price and / or its business model is better suited to that of the target company, so that a joint market presence appears sensible.
Examples
In 1981 Seagram tried to take over Conoco Inc. , a large American oil and gas producer. Although Seagram was able to acquire 32.2% of the company, the hostile takeover failed because the chemical company DuPont came into play as the White Knight and took over Conoco. In exchange for the shares in Conoco, Seagram received 24.3% of DuPont. Until 1995 Seagram was DuPont's largest single shareholder and had four seats on the board of directors - 70% of Seagram's income at that time came from its stake in DuPont.
In 2004, the Swiss company Novartis was traded as the White Knight in the battle for the takeover of the Franco-German pharmaceutical company Aventis by the French company Sanofi-Synthélabo .
Another example is the Porsche-VW-Coup. In this case, Porsche appeared as the White Knight by purchasing 32,868,462 (10.26%) VW ordinary shares. The aim of this campaign was to build a voting majority together with the state of Lower Saxony and thus prevent a possible takeover by hedge funds . In March 2007, Porsche increased the share to 31%.
In March 2006, the Leverkusen pharmaceutical company Bayer was also known as the White Knight, which had outbid Merck's takeover offer for the Berlin company Schering . Bayer became the White Knight because Schering's management had described the offer as financially more attractive and saw the threat of relocation of the company's location from Berlin to Darmstadt averted with the takeover by Merck.
Günter and Daniela Herz founded Mayfair Vermögensverwaltung in Hamburg in 2002 . In 2005 Mayfair acquired around 27 percent of the sporting goods manufacturer Puma . When the French luxury group PPR announced a takeover offer for Puma at EUR 330 per share on April 10, 2007, Mayfair sold and realized a profit of around half a billion euros. As a white knight, Mayfair Vermögensverwaltung in Hamburg protected the technical ship service provider Germanischer Lloyd from a hostile takeover by its competitor Bureau Veritas : On December 15, 2006, it took over 90% of the shares, thus ensuring the independence of the classification society .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Springer Gabler Verlag (editor), Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon, keyword: white knight, online in the Internet
- ↑ Bayer as "White Knight"? Onyx rejects Amgen's offer worth billions on n-tv.de , accessed on August 7, 2013 (German)