Grupo SURA, Colombia’s largest holding company, has received a public acquisition offer for between 25.34% and 31.68% of its circulating shares from financial conglomerate Grupo Gilinski, the financial regulator and stock exchange said late on Tuesday.
The offer is worth between $952.1 million and $1.19 billion at a price of $8.01 per share, according to Reuters calculations based on stock exchange data.
“JGDB Holding S.A.S. presented guarantees to participate in a public acquisition offer for ordinary shares of Grupo de Inversiones Suramericana S.A.,” the stock exchange said in a statement, referring to the Gilinski subsidiary.
The financial regulator ordered the suspension of trading in SURA shares from Wednesday until the day after the public offer is officially published by JGDB.
Neither SURA nor Grupo Gilinski responded immediately to requests for comment.
SURA shares closed trading on Tuesday at 25,150 pesos ($6.27) per share.
The company, which is made up of insurer Suramericana and pension fund manager Sura Asset Manager, also owns stakes of 20% to 50% in Bancolombia, investor Grupo Argos and processed food company Grupo Nutresa.
The offer for SURA comes just weeks after a similar move by a Gilinski-controlled company for a majority stake in Nutresa.
Nugil SAS, which is controlled by Grupo Gilinski, wants to buy between 50.1% and 62.625% of Nutresa’s shares at a price of $7.71 per share, valuing the deal between $1.78 billion and $2.22 billion.
SURA, which owns 35.7% of Nutresa, and Grupo Argos said late last week they would analyze the Nugil offer.
According to Refinitiv data, Nutresa holds about 13% of SURA.
SURA said on Friday its shareholders had authorized it to seek a strategic partner to take a non-controlling stake.
Source: Reuters.com