Germany's largest housing group Vonovia from Bochum has moved away from its previous conditions in the struggle to take over competitor Deutsche Wohnen. Vonovia has, among other things, removed the minimum acceptance threshold of 50 percent of Deutsche Wohnen shares from its takeover offer, Deutsche Wohnen announced on Monday in Berlin. There are no valid reasons for Deutsche Wohnen to refuse to consent to the waiver of the minimum acceptance threshold, it said. By waiving the closing conditions of the takeover offer, the acceptance period, which originally expired on September 20, 2021, will be extended by two weeks and will now end on October 4, 2021.
This means that the Bochum-based company could take over number two on the German housing market even if the investors should not offer it the majority of shares again. Vonovia had previously made it a condition for its offer that Deutsche Wohnen investors exchange at least more than 50 percent of their shares for a cash offer of 53 euros per paper. The real estate company announced on Monday that it had secured 34.10 percent of the shares in Deutsche Wohnen by last Friday.
Vonovia just failed to reach the minimum acceptance threshold of 50 percent with its takeover offer for Deutsche Wohnen last month.
The group was offered only 47.62 percent of the shares in Deutsche Wohnen.
At the time, CEO Rolf Buch had blamed hedge funds for the failure of the billion-dollar transaction.
For the new attempt, he increased the offer by one euro to 53 euros per share.
Vonovia owns around 414,000 apartments in Germany, Austria and Sweden.
With 114,000 apartments, Deutsche Wohnen is the largest private landlord in the capital: Around 114,000 of the more than 155,000 apartments are in the greater Berlin area.