Europcar rejects $2.6 Billion takeover Bid From Volkswagen
Europcar Mobility Group, the leader in car rental services worldwide, with rental locations in over 140 countries has rejected a bid from Volkswagen AG valuing the auto-rental firm at about 2.2 billion euros ($2.6 billion), some sources have revealed.
A consortium led by the German carmaker where investment firm Attestor Ltd. and Dutch transport conglomerate Pon Holdings BV were among the bidding group. They had offered about 44 euro cents per share for Europcar earlier this month, however, the rental car services provider works on hedge funds and considered the proposal to be too low- people with information on the matter said, however taking into consideration the privacy issues, they chose not to disclose their identities.
Europcar confirmed in a statement after Bloomberg’s report that it had rejected a 44 cents-per-share bid without saying who was behind the approach.
The offer would represent about a 12% premium to Europcar’s Tuesday closing price which had its biggest gain in 6 weeks, rising as high as 9.5% on Wednesday.
Volkswagen is interested in gaining access to Europcar’s infrastructure and technology in a bet on the future of mobility services and currently has no plans on raising its offer- however people said this is not certain, this could change also, even though the demand for rental cars has regained substantially as governments have slowly lifted pandemic related restrictions, companies in the space face long-term challenges from newer entrants offering ride-hailing and car-sharing
Representatives for Volkswagen, Attestor and Pon declined to comment.