White knight (business)

White Knight is in the equity markets called a company that the takeover candidate comes to the rescue with a planned hostile takeover, the counterpart to this is the Black Knight. The Black Knight is in the context of corporate takeovers, an investor who wants to buy up a company against the will of its management. One speaks in this case of a hostile takeover.

The assistance can range from support in the defensive battle up to an association or a takeover. In the interest of the target company can be such an approach, if the white knight offers a higher price and / or its business model to better fit the target company, so that a common market approach seems sensible.

Examples

In 2004, the Swiss company Novartis has acted as a white knight in the battle for the takeover of the Franco-German pharmaceutical group Aventis by Sanofi -Synthelabo, the French company.

Another example is the Porsche -VW - coup. In this case, Porsche has emerged as a white knight in appearance by having acquired 32,868,462 ( 10.26% ) VW ordinary shares. The aim of this action was to build a majority voting interest, together with the state of Lower Saxony and thus prevent a possible takeover by hedge funds. In March 2007, Porsche stopped the stake to 31%.

In March 2006, the pharmaceutical company Bayer Leverkusen was called White Knight, who had outbid the takeover offer from Merck for the Berlin-based Schering. The White Knight Bayer was in this case, since the management of Schering had described the offer as financially attractive and looked averted with the takeover by Merck threat of displacement of the company's location from Berlin to Darmstadt.

Günter and Daniela Herz in 2002 founded the Mayfair Asset Management in Hamburg. 2005 Mayfair acquired about 27 percent of the sports goods manufacturer Puma. When the French luxury group PPR on 10 April 2007 announced a takeover bid for Puma to 330 euros per share, sold Mayfair and realized it around half a billion euros profit.

As a white knight in the Mayfair Asset Management in Hamburg preserved the technical service Germanischer Lloyd ship from a hostile takeover by the rival Bureau Veritas: On 15 December 2006, it took over 90 % of the shares and thus made ​​the independence of the classification society safe.