Benettons’ Atlantia gets deal with Spain’s Perez on Abertis

Bloomberg

The Benetton family’s Atlantia SpA reached a preliminary agreement with Real Madrid Chairman Florentino Perez’s ACS to jointly buy Abertis Infraestructuras SA, ending an eight-month battle for control of the Spanish toll-road operator.
The accord was expected to be discussed at a board meeting on Wednesday, Rome-based Atlantia said in a statement, without giving any details. Shares in Abertis and ACS were suspended.
Atlantia and Perez’s Actividades de Construccion y Servicios SA will create a co-owned holding company to control Abertis if their bid is accepted, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not
to be named because the matter is private. The offer would be based on the 18.2 billion-euro ($22.4 billion) proposal put forth by ACS’s German arm.
Atlantia is set to have just over 50 percent of the new entity, the people said, allowing the Italian company to consolidate the results of the Spanish prize.
Atlantia will also name the CEO, while ACS will name the chairman of the holding company, which will be based in Madrid.
The co-ownership arrangement averts a bidding war while defusing the political minefield that cropped up in Spain as Atlantia pursued the acquisition on its own.
Abertis will remain Spanish, though its new Italian co-owners will have a stronger hand in management and get credit from investors for the results.
The two sides reached a tentative agreement to team up soon after ACS’s counter-bid was approved by regulators, Bloomberg News reported. The deal doesn’t include a breakup plan for the Spanish company, signalling Atlantia CEO Giovanni Castellucci and ACS’s Perez, who have been circling each other for months, will have to cooperate to run Abertis.
It also frees capital for Atlantia, which has just agreed to buy a 1.06 billion-euro stake in Eurotunnel, to seek more acquisitions to expand outside Italy.
Perez emerged in July at the helm of a Spanish counter-bid for Abertis as Mariano Rajoy’s government wasn’t willing to concede the country’s biggest toll road operator, which manages 8,650 kilometres of highways, including roads in France, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Chile, to its Italian rival.
The Spanish government was favoring a domestic buyer for Abertis, which was considered a strategic asset due to its infrastructure interests and satellite operating arm, Hispasat, people familiar with the matter said at the time.