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The oligarch Viktor Vekselberg is taking legal action against the main shareholder Martin Haefner in the fight for the steel group Swiss Steel and awaits the acquisition commission.
Viktor Vekselberg does not want to back down in the power struggle for Swiss Steel.
Photo: LMD
In the dispute for power and influence in Swiss Steel, investor Viktor Vekselberg takes out heavy artillery. Holding Liwet, whose main shareholder is Vekselberg, has filed a complaint. This is directed against the largest shareholder in the steel company: Amag owner Martin Haefner’s Big Point company. Haefner now owns about 49.6 percent of Swiss Steel after investing a large amount of money in bailing out the traditional Lucerne company. In return, Liwet’s stake has been reduced to just under 25 percent.
The oligarch doesn’t like that. The core of the initiative is an exemption through which Haefner became the largest shareholder. It invested 325 million euros through a capital increase and therefore owned more than 33.3 percent of the voting rights at one time. Above this threshold, a shareholder must normally make a mandatory takeover offer to the remaining shareholders. Haefner didn’t want that and Swiss Steel urgently needed money. Therefore, the Financial Market Authority made an exception, with one condition: If you still have more than 33.3 percent at the end of 2024, you must make a takeover offer.
The exception rule causes problems
That was a thorn in the side of the steel company’s other shareholders, especially since Haefner bought a block of shares from the founding family shortly thereafter and thus expanded its stake even further. All of that was just less than a year ago. Swiss Steel is now facing a new capital increase of more than 200 million euros. And Haefner is likely to expand his stake further, to more than 50 percent.
Vekselberg doesn’t want to stare. Holding Liwet views Haefner’s action as a violation of the exemption from the financial market supervisory authority (Finma). A spokesperson for the holding company confirmed the announcement.
Martin Haefner, majority shareholder, during the Extraordinary General Meeting of Schmolz and Bickenbach on Monday, December 2, 2019 in Emmenbrücke.
Photo: Alexandra Wey (Keystone)
Parallel to the notification to the acquisition commission, Liwet also asks Haefner for a binding offer for all shareholders. It was reportedly originally planned that way, but there’s a catch: Vekselberg is still under U.S. sanctions. These also apply to some extent to business partners who transfer money to you. Liwet himself is not subject to sanctions. But Vekselberg is the largest shareholder in the holding company, and Haefner fears that a transaction in the course of a takeover bid could also be risky for him and, ultimately, for the empire of his company: Amag. Several other examples show how great the fear of US sanctions is: the private bank Julius Baer has frozen Vekselberg funds, and the Postfinance denied him an account for fear of possible penalties.
In recent months, a small shareholder alliance had been launched against the growing influence of Haefner Sturm. From his point of view, however, it does not matter if he temporarily takes a larger stake to reorganize the company. Because you are in control anyway and you trust Finma’s exemption, which is legally valid. “There is no reason … to question them,” says a spokesman for Haefners Holding Big Point.
How the acquisition commission is doing on the recent escalation in the billionaires’ fight and whether they will open a new procedure, it left it open Tuesday.
