The company is struggling with bleak business prospects.
(Photo: dpa)
Frankfurt The financial investor Silver Lake wants to take over the recently weakening Software AG for 2.2 billion euros. Silver Lake is offering 30 euros per share in cash, a premium of around 50 percent on Friday’s closing price, as the financial investor and the Darmstadt-based software group announced on Saturday night.
With his offer, Silver Lake wants to collect at least 50 percent plus one share in the company software provider. He has already secured 25.1 percent from the major shareholder Software AG Foundation. “We welcome the planned takeover of Software AG by Silver Lake,” said the group’s co-founder and head of the foundation, Peter Schnell.
Software AG, founded in 1969, is struggling with bleak business prospects. At the beginning of February, she announced that she would cut 400 jobs – around four percent of the workforce – and lowered the margin targets for 2023. Customers were reluctant to make decisions because of the difficult economic environment, and the increased swing of customers to subscriptions is also having an effect, company boss Sanjay Brahmawar had justified the weakening business.
The Management Board of Software AG and the Takeover Committee on behalf of the Supervisory Board backed Silver Lake’s offer. According to the information provided, the financial investor promised, among other things, as part of an investment agreement, that it would not plan any changes to the company’s current headquarters or locations. Together, the company and Silver Lake particularly wanted to implement the rapid switch to a subscription model and invest in the cloud-readiness of the product portfolio, explained Silver Lake.
The financial investor emphasized that a domination and/or profit and loss transfer agreement is not necessary for Silver Lake to finance the takeover bid and to achieve its economic and strategic goals. However, he wants to take the SAP competitor off the stock exchange as quickly as possible after the takeover.
Among other things, the takeover bid still has to be approved by the financial supervisory authority BaFin. Only then will the official offer document be published and the shareholders can tender their share certificates. The Software AG Foundation will continue to hold five percent of the shares even after the majority of its shares have been sold. Those retained shares are subject to a lockup, Silver Lake said.
More: Get out of the value trap: How Silver Lake finally wants to put Software AG on course for growth
