US investor raises another obstacle for CMB’s takeover of Euronav

Funds managed by FourWorld Capital Management have filed another complaint regarding Compagnie Maritime Belge’s (CMB) offer to purchase all outstanding ordinary shares of Euronav, this time with the Market Court in Belgium.

With this new complaint, FourWorld is looking to put a stop to CMB’s Belgian mandatory offer for all shares of Euronav. This comes less than a week after the investment adviser firm filed a complaint in a US District Court to prevent CMB’s offer to buy all outstanding ordinary shares of Euronav from US holders. CMB officially launched a mandatory public takeover bid on all shares in Euronav earlier this month.

In its latest application in Belgium, FourWorld requested the Market Court determine that the price of the mandatory offer was too low as it does not consider alleged special benefits that would have been granted to Frontline on top of the cash purchase price paid by CMB for its Euronav shares. The company also wants the court to order CMB to adjust the bid price considering the alleged special benefits. According to CMB, the request does not indicate what this higher price should be.

To address some of the points raised in that complaint, at CMB’s request, Euronav made additional documents available on its website in addition to the documents related to the transactions already made public. Like in the case of the US complaint, CMB stated that the proceeding was “without merit and intends to vigorously defend against it”.

The Saverys family-controlled company did state that, in the unlikely event the request would lead to a decision of the Market Court to increase the bid price after the bid has closed, such increase would apply to shareholders who have already tendered their shares. As a result, CMB will reopen the bid to grant shareholders the opportunity to tender their shares at the increased price.

As for Frontline’s place in the entire takeover story, Euronav agreed to sell 24 VLCCs for $2.35bn in exchange for Fredriksen’s company backing away from the takeover attempt of Euronav.

Also, the independent members of Euronav’s supervisory board and an overwhelming majority of shareholders supported the CMB takeover bid, but FourWorld’s representative did not use the opportunity to raise any objections or concerns at the time.