Hisense To Buy Out Gorenje’s Minority Shareholders, Replace Supervisors

By , 17 Sep 2018, 15:03 PM Business
Hisense To Buy Out Gorenje’s Minority Shareholders, Replace Supervisors The firm's websites

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STA, 17 September 2018 – The Chinese firm Hisense, which acquired 95.4% in Gorenje earlier this year, has decided to squeeze out the remaining minority shareholders of the Slovenian household appliance maker. The group will delist Gorenje from the Ljubljana and Warsaw stock exchanges. 

Hisense will give EUR 12 per share to the owners of the remaining 4.58% stake in Gorenje, shows a release published by the Ljubljana Stock Exchange on Monday after the company's annual general meeting.

A video showing some of the Hisense production process

The shareholders' decision to delist Gorenje from the stock exchanges was met with mixed reactions by analysts, who fear that Gorenje's withdrawal will bring nothing good for the Ljubljana Stock Exchange.

Gorenje's stock was the seventh most traded item on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange last year, with the withdrawal "further limiting the selection, above all for foreign and institutional investors, who require greater liquidity", Sašo Stanovnik of brokerage Alta Skladi told the STA.

According to him, the withdrawal confirms the need for new listings, as Gorenje's withdrawal puts the number of stocks in the prime market to eight, while traders can choose from 21 items in the standard market. "Such a small market is certainly a problem," Stanovnik said.

While agreeing that the delisting of Gorenje is certainly bad news for the Slovenian market, Jože Gerbec of the brokerage Ilirika, also sees something positive in the whole situation. "It's positive that the money has come to Slovenia ... and some of it could make it back to the stock market."

Meanwhile, the management of the Ljubljana Stock Exchange said that takeovers "are reflected in more deals in the short term, which is certainly positive, but in the long run, takeovers can also translate in the withdrawal of companies from the market."

The withdrawal of Gorenje, which was first listed on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange on 2 June 1998, moreover means a loss of revenue for the stock market. The stock ended flat at EUR 11.85 today.

The Chinese group entered Gorenje as a strategic partner in May, and increased its stake to 95.42% in a takeover bid that ran at EUR 12 per share between 29 May and 26 June.

Today, shareholders also got acquainted with the resignations of supervisors Corinna Claudia Graf, Bernard Charles Pasquier, Miha Košak and Bachtiar Djalil.

They were replaced by Hisense representatives Yeguo Tang, Shaoquian Jia, Huizhong Dai, Caixia Chen, Yuling Gao, Xin Liu and Wenzhong Liu.

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