Atlantia set to be delisted as buyout bid reaches 90% threshold

MILAN (Reuters) -A buyout offer launched by the Benetton family and U.S. investment fund Blackstone for Italy’s Atlantia has reached the 90% threshold for the deal to proceed and trigger the company’s delisting, the bidders said on Thursday.

The bid initially failed to reach the threshold but was then reopened for another five days and closes on Friday.

The bidders’ vehicle named Schema Alfa said in a statement the planned delisting would happen “as soon as possible in the following weeks”.

The enterprise value of the deal was around 54 billion euros ($56.32 billion) based on Atlantia’s debt level at the end of last year. That makes it the fourth biggest deal worldwide announced so far this year, according to Refinitiv data.

The Benettons began the bid with Blackstone in April after they rejected an approach by investment funds Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and Brookfield to acquire Atlantia and hand its motorway concessions to Florentino Perez’s Spanish construction group ACS.

Atlantia shares closed at 22.95 euros on Wednesday, just below the 23 euros per share Schema Alfa is offering to pay.

($1 = 0.9588 euros)

(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak, editing by Gianluca Semeraro)