Investment house Meitav Dash has notified the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange of the cancellation of the deal for a merger with overseas investment fund XIO. The Meitav Dash board met yesterday and decided to cancel the merger after the deadline for completion of the deal in its revised format passed.
The CEO of Meitav Dash is Ilan Raviv.
Meitav Dash said that the XIO group had informed it of the control structure that would apply in the company after completion of the acquisition, and that in its view this structure was materially different from the structure agreed between the sides and represented a breach of their understandings. It said that the company therefore had the right to cancel the agreement with immediate effect, and that it had done so.
XIO earlier changed the proposed control structure for the purposes of applying for regulatory approval for the acquisition, removing two of the partners in the fund (who are involved in a legal dispute with a Chinese businessman) and co-opting, as a minority shareholder, Aharon Fogel, who was intended to be a known and acceptable figure for the Israeli regulator. Fogel is a former chairman of Migdal Insurance and Financial Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MGDL), and in the more distant past was director-general of the Ministry of Finance. He was designated to be part of the group buying Meitav Dash, and as chairman.
Meitav Dash stated last month: "If the applications for regulatory approvals on the basis of the revised format are not submitted by the stated date, the company will have the right to inform the XIO group of the immediate cancellation of the merger agreement, without XIO having a further period in which to cure the deficiency." Even after Fogel joined the acquiring group and the change in the group's structure, it was not unlikely that the deal would still not be approved.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 22, 2017
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