Havas surges on Vivendi offer

Havas shares surged on Friday after media group Vivendi offered €9.25 a share in cash to buy Group Bollore's 60% stake in the French advertising and PR company.

The price, which values the stake at €2.3bn, represents an 8.8% premium to the closing price of Havas on 10 May.

Vivendi said that having consolidated its foundations, it is now entering a new phase in its development and this deal will give the group "a new dimension to compete against powerful global players".

"This strategic transaction will allow Vivendi to accelerate its building of a leading world-class content, media and communications group and will ensure the newly created group a unique positioning in an environment in which content, distribution and communications are converging.

"The proposed acquisition will enable Vivendi to strengthen all of its businesses at a time of profound transformation. In this environment which offers attractive development prospects, in-depth consumer knowledge and strong data analytics capabilities represent a significant competitive advantage."

Olivetree Financial said: "This is more of a shuffling of deckchairs exercise than a real desire to acquire the minorities of Havas. There is no obligation on Havas shareholders to tender into the offer, although the exercise for longer-term holders might be to try to model what takeout premium was already baked into the shares ahead of yesterday.

"The market has long expected Vivendi to clean this situation up, the Bollores have made no secret of the fact that they see it as sensible to bring the two groups closer together. A 9% premium might not seem overly attractive, but given Havas shares have generally traded with expectations of some value transfer from Vivendi to the Bollores (and therefore to Havas), once this falls away the true premium may become clear.

"From a Vivendi minority standpoint, there will likely be accusations of corporate governance failings - but again these are well documented previously."

At 0824 BST, Havas shares were up 10.4% to €9.35 while Vivendi shares were up 5.5% to €19.39.