Schneider Electric in sweetened £10bn final offer for Aveva

A French business looking to snap up Aveva has sweetened its takeover offer following pressure from other investors. 

Conglomerate Schneider Electric, which already owns 59 per cent of the FTSE100 industrial software firm, has offered to pay 3225p in cash for each Aveva share it does not already own, up from its previous bid of 3100p. 

The bid is a 47 per cent premium to the firm’s closing price on August 23, the day before Schneider’s first offer was announced, and values the entire company at around £9.9billion. Schneider said the offer was final. 

Upping the ante: Conglomerate Schneider Electric has offered to pay 3225p in cash for each Aveva share it does not already own

Aveva shares inched up 0.8 per cent, or 24p, to 3169p following the news. The increased offer came after several of Aveva’s minority investors threatened to reject the takeover offer. 

Hedge fund Davidson Kempner, which owns 3.8 per cent of the company, said earlier this week it had ‘deep concerns’ about the deal and accused Schneider boss Peter Herweck of ‘poor communication’. 

Other shareholders including M&G Investments and Canadian firm Mawer have also been against the takeover on the grounds it was ‘opportunistic’ and attempting to take advantage of weakness in Aveva’s share price, which fell 34 per cent over the year to date before the bid was announced in late August. 

The opposition threatens to scuttle Schneider’s swoop on the company, as it needs to secure over 75 per cent support from the minority shareholders for the deal to go through.