Dominika Kulczyk, one of the richest people in Poland, announced a tender offer on Monday to buy 49.8 percent of shares in utility Polenergia to give her full control of the company.
Kulczyk said in a statement that she was offering 20.5 zlotys per share, valuing the stake at 464 million zlotys ($123 million), and plans to delist the company from the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
She currently holds a 50.2 percent stake in the utility.
Shares in Polenergia jumped 9 percent on news of Kulczyk’s bid, to 20.40 zlotys per share. It was unclear whether other shareholders were likely to accept Kulczyk’s offer.
Kulczyk’s offer was higher than a bid in May by state-run PGE, Poland’s biggest power group, which launched a tender to buy 100 percent of Polenergia, offering 16.29 zlotys per share.
The Kulczyk family, however, said it would not sell its shares in Polenergia to PGE, although the PGE tender is still open and will not close until Sept. 20.
In July siblings Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk, heirs of the late billionaire Jan Kulczyk, split their fortune and Dominika became the only majority shareholder in Polenergia.
“Polenergia is a long-term investment to me. I plan to change Polenergia into the biggest private energy group that will invest not only in Poland,” Dominika Kulczyk said in her statement on Monday.
Investors can subscribe to sell their shares in Polenergia to Dominika Kulczyk starting from Sept. 17 until Oct. 17.
Other shareholders in Polenergia include China-Central and Eastern Europe Investment Co-operation Fund, which has a 15.99-percent stake, as well as pension funds owned by Aviva , Nationale-Nederlanden and Generali.
The China-CEE Fund signalled in June that it would not sell its shares to PGE as it was a long-term investor, while the pension funds said the price offered by PGE was too low.
Polenergia shares have gained 54 percent this year, following a 14 percent rise in 2017, rebounding after they slid 61.5 percent in 2016 due to the policies of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which hit investors in Poland’s wind farms.
This year PiS, which considers wind farms an unstable source of electricity, has taken a step back and proposed to change some regulations imposed in recent years. ($1 = 3.7530 zlotys) (Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko; Editing by Susan Fenton)
Source: reuters.com