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GREVIN & CIE
FRANCE
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THE SERIAL
It was the whole little world of amusement parks that was holding its breath last May and June...Next to this action-packed serial, with Grévin & CO. in the centre of it all, even the World Cup paled into insignificance. Infoparks.com recaps the key episodes of this fascinating series.
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TAKEOVER BID
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Let's first remember that Grévin & Co. is the new name of the Parc Astérix group that has about a dozen parks in France, as well as in the Netherlands and Germany.
On Friday 17 May, at the request of C3D (Caisse des Dépots-Dévelopment), the listing of Grévin & Co. on the stock market was suspended. C3D is a subsidiary of Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations and a majority shareholder of the group with 30.7% of its capital in its possession. What was behind the suspension? Did C3D simply want to make its presence felt or was it planning to abandon the group? The suspense was at its highest...Finally, a few days later: C3D announced its bid to takeover Grévin, by its subsidiary la Compagnie des Alpes (CDA), which specialises in developing ski resorts...
28 May: The board of directors at Grévin & Co. found the tender-at 30 euros a share-, in light of the "favourable forecasts for the year as well as developments that are taking place," too low. And Olivier de Bosredon, President and CEO of Grévin & Co. added as a side remark that the value of the shares would soon increase to between 38 to 42 euros. We thought at this point that it was the end of the story, but that would be underestimating the talents of the scriptwriters...
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REVERSAL
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And indeed, on June 4, CDA made another offer. At 33.36 euros a share, it was far from Mr. de Bosredon's estimate but this time, the board of directors accepted the offer. The question now was whether their development strategy (see interview with Philippe Pichon, head of development at Grévin & Co) would remain the same.
An unambiguous "Yes," was Mr. de Bosredon's response. Interviewed June 20th by infoparks.com, he added, "The offer by Compagnie des Alpes might be slightly lower than my expectations...but after negotiations we came to the agreement that there are other considerations to take into account that are to our satisfaction: the managerial teams will remain in place and, on top of that, we will have access to further resources to reinforce our development strategy."
Reinforce a development strategy based on acquiring parks throughout Europe? Does that mean a vaster and more rapid conquest of the Old World is in store for us? "In any case, the coming years are of utmost importance: the idea is to form a federation of parks that are in essence French", and, as Philippe Pichon said in the interview with us, "to become the European leader in amusement parks."
Don't miss the next episode...
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07/04/2002 |
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