Zentiva not to up offer for Sicomed

Pharmaceutical company Zentiva has no intention of upping the offer put out on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in order to take over all Sicomed shares, stated Peter Sulc, financial manager with the Czech company, even though some of the minority shareholders challenged the price offered. He said the offer was compliant with the laws in Romania and with the regulations of the BSE and had been approved by CNVM. Sulc added the offer was an attractive proposal for shareholders that the company had no intention of upping or modifying in any way. US-based investment fund QVT officially challenged the offer made by Zentiva for the shares in drugmaker Sicomed Bucharest, in a letter sent to the National Securities Commission (CNVM) on Friday, saying the price offered by the Czechs was too low. CNVM did not comment on this complaint. QVT Financial owns 1.4% in Sicomed according to information on the market and announced plans to challenge the offer last week. “We sent a letter today (i.e. Friday) to CNVM requesting them to invalidate the offer on the grounds that Zentiva was not offering minority shareholders the same price (200 million dollars) that it publicly announced in the release on October 12,” Angelo Moskov, the representative of the investment fund told Ziarul Financiar. The differences between Zentiva and the minority shareholders stem from the RON/USD exchange rate trend. Zentiva had announced it would put out an offer at $0.4797/share, the same as it had paid to the investment funds for the majority stake. They probably calculated the price in RON at the exchange rate valid on the day they launched the offer. The price offered by Zentiva is 1.37 RON/share. The increase in the RON/USD exchange rate has led the price in dollars announced by the Czechs to be equivalent to 1.5 RON. ZF