Airbus Group late last week announced plans to dispose of all its remaining 1.33 million shares of Dassault Aviation, with 830,000 shares, or 62 percent, being sold to institutional investors and 502,282 shares bought back by Dassault Aviation. The private placement to institutional investors is via an issuance of bonds exchangeable into Dassault Aviation shares in five years, meaning Airbus will continue to hold about 11.7 percent of voting rights in Dassault until their conversion. This is down from 26.1 percent.
Simultaneously to this placement, Dassault Aviation acquired the more than half a million shares for €477 million ($536.6 million), equating to €950 ($1,069) per share. “The board of directors of Dassault Aviation decided to allocate these acquired shares to the objective of cancellation, which cannot occur before December 23, 2016,” Dassault said in a statement. The primary object of “cancellation of shares” is to distribute the surplus cash among the shareholders, which includes the Dassault-family controlled Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault that will now own 72.3 percent of the company, up from 64.7 percent.
The offering to institutional investors was also priced at €950 per share, but the €1.078 billion ($1.21 billion) zero coupon bond issued, due in 2021, is exchangeable into Dassault Aviation shares at a 37.5-percent premium above the sale price of the shares.