Gleiss Lutz Advises Bidder Telefónica on Billion-Euro Public Acquisition Offer

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A Gleiss Lutz team has advised the Spanish listed company Telefónica S.A. on its public purchase offer to all shareholders of Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG.

Telefónica Local Services GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telefónica S.A., announced that it intends to submit a voluntary public acquisition offer of EUR 2.35 in cash per Telefónica Deutschland share.

This will put Telefónica Deutschland at a market value of almost EUR 7 billion. Telefónica S.A. currently holds (directly and indirectly) approximately 71.81% of the shares in Telefónica Deutschland. The offer is structured as a partial offer and is aimed at the acquisition of up to 838,452,647 no-par value registered shares in Telefónica Deutschland not already held (indirectly) by Telefónica S.A. (corresponding to approximately 28.19% of the share capital and voting rights of Telefónica Deutschland).

Telefónica Deutschland has its registered office in Munich. Its shares are traded on the regulated market (Prime Standard) of Deutsche Börse AG in Frankfurt am Main and listed in the TecDAX and MDAX indexes. The Telefónica Deutschland Group has approximately 7,400 employees and generated turnover of more than EUR 8.2 billion in 2022.

Telefónica S.A. is one of the largest telecommunications service providers in the world. It offers fixed and mobile connectivity, as well as a wide range of digital services for private and business customers. With more than 384 million customers, Telefónica operates in Europe and Latin America. In 2022, the Telefónica Group had a total turnover of over EUR 39.9 billion.

Gleiss Lutz has extensive expertise in public takeovers and is regularly involved in top-flight transactions (both friendly and hostile) - advising bidders, boards of targets, or investment banks. In the last 12 months, Gleiss Lutz teams have advised, for example, the takeover committee of Vitesco Technologies AG in connection with Schaeffler's public acquisition offer, the management board of SYNLAB AG in connection with Cinven's public acquisition offer, the supervisory board of Software AG in connection with Silver Lake's public takeover offer and the main shareholder of va-Q-tec AG in connection with EQT's takeover offer.