Swedish consultancy AF offers to buy Finnish Poyry for EUR 600m

Swedish technical consultancy AF (STO:AF-B) on Monday unveiled a plan to buy Finnish peer Poyry (HEL:POY1V) for EUR 611 million (USD 698 million) in a bid to create a new major player in the European engineering and consulting market.

AF said it would launch a cash tender offer for Poyry’s shares at EUR 10.20 apiece, or more than EUR 3 above the target company's closing price of EUR 7 on Friday.

Investors representing more than half of Poyry's share capital have already committed to accepting the offer, AF said.

The acceptance period is expected to commence on or about December 20 and expire on or about January 31 next year.

The combined company, tentatively named AF-Poyry AB, will have more capability and greater capacity to invest, AF said, adding that the tie-up is expected to generate cost synergies of SEK 180 million a year, that should be realised fully by 2020.

The combined company’s revenue for the 12 months ended September 30 2018 stood at about SEK 19 billion (USD 2.10bn/EUR 1.84bn).

Shares in Poyry were trading at EUR 10.15 at 1500 in Helsinki on Monday, 45% higher than on Friday's close. AF's shares were trading at SEK 170.2 in Stockholm, 5.34% lower than on Friday's close.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.142)

(SEK 10.0 = USD 1.105/EUR 0.968)

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