|
|
  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Agricole fuels bidding war
PARIS, France (CNN) -- France's Credit Agricole stepped up its battle to take control of rival Credit Lyonnais by boosting its stake in the country's sixth-largest bank. The bank, which replaced its chairman, Marc Bue, earlier this month after rival BNP Paribas snatched a stake in Lyonnais from under its nose, on Wednesday raised its holding to 17.4 percent from 12.2 percent. BNP Paribas, France's biggest bank, bought a 10.9 percent stake in Lyonnais late last month after Bue refused to bid more than 44 euros per share for the government's stake. Finance Minister Francis Mer was then forced to auction the stake to the highest bidder. BNP went on to buy more shares and now hold more than 16 percent of Lyonnias. The audacious move by BNP Paribas, the euro zone's biggest bank by market value, could trigger an all-out bidding war for Credit Lyonnais. Agricole, whose regional branches are sitting on an estimated 10 billion euros in surplus capital, is in a position to offer more cash than BNP if it can convince its fiercely independent regional "caisses'' to pay up for a takeover bid, Reuters said. A series of strategic blunders by Agricole management suggests that BNP Paribas could still manage to prevail, some analysts say. Credit Lyonnais has scheduled a board meeting for 1500 GMT on Wednesday to discuss recent changes in ownership of its capital, according to an internal note obtained by Reuters on Tuesday. Six financial institutions own a third of Credit Lyonnais after the government sold shares in 1999; they include Agricole, French insurers AGF (PAGF) and Axa (PCGE), German bank Commerzbank (FCBK), Spain's BBVA and Italy's Banca Intesa. Any of the shareholders who want to sell their stakes are obliged, until July, to offer them to other members of the group. Credit Lyonnais, which has a market capitalisation of about 13 billion euros and is seen as too small to continue on its own in the long term, held talks with Credit Agricole about a merger earlier this year before disagreements over the balance of power in a combined group scuppered a deal. Credit Agricole stock rose 1 percent to 16.04 euros, Lyonnais gained 0.9 percent to 54.10 euros and BNP Paribas climbed 2 percent to 37.25 euros in early Paris trading on Wednesday. Reuters contributed to this report.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
