MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oct 5 Southeastern Asset Management, a shareholder group with a stake in Swiss chemicals company Sika AG, reaffirmed its support for the current board on Monday after controlling shareholders renewed efforts to oust the board after a failed attempt in July, said Reuters.
Southeastern, which owns about 4 percent of Sika, said in a statement the sale of the Schenker-Winkler family's 16 percent stake to Compagnie de Saint-Gobain at an 80 percent premium is disadvantageous to all non-family Sika stakeholders and to Saint-Gobain and its shareholders.
Last December, Saint-Gobain agreed to buy a 16.1 percent stake from the Burkard-Schenker family that carries 52.4 percent of Sika's voting rights -- enough for control and, at 2.75 billion Swiss francs (USD2.83 billion), a far cheaper option than buying the whole company.
However, at a shareholder meeting called by the family in July to remove some board members, the board capped their voting rights at 5 percent, thwarting any attempts to elect a replacement aligned with the Burkard-Schenker family to sell their stake to Saint-Gobain.
Sika could not be immediately reached for comment outside regular business hours.
As MRC informed before, Sika AG reported a 28% increase in annual profit as the Swiss construction and industrial chemical maker continues fending off a hostile takeover bid from France's Saint-Gobain SA.
Sika is a specialty chemicals company with a leading position in the development and production of systems and products for bonding, sealing, damping, reinforcing and protecting in the building sector and the motor vehicle industry. Sika has subsidiaries in 90 countries around the world and manufactures in over 160 factories. Its more than 16,000 employees generated annual sales of CHF 5.6 billion in 2014.
MRC