The National Securities Commission (CNVM) on Tuesday night blocked the transaction that saw the Austrian insurer Uniqa take over 27% in Romanian insurance company Astra for 10 million euros, on the RASDAQ market. The reason: the Austrians may pay up and then notice that they no longer own any Astra shares.
The main Astra shareholder, the Nova Trade company controlled by businessman Dan Adamescu sold a stake in the insurer on Tuesday morning. Afterwards, the CNVM decided to suspend the shares from trading and block the shares owned by the majority shareholder, including the stake sold that morning. The stake sold by Adamescu is involved in a lawsuit, which could see the shares cancelled.
The actual transfer of property rights over the shares takes place three days after closing the deal, so that Uniqa was to become the owner of the stake in Astra tomorrow.
Earlier this year, the sale of Asirom to Austrian company Uniqa had been proclaimed a done deal on the insurance market. Then, for a number of weeks, Uniqa was mooted as the future owner of Ardaf. In the end, a deal was struck with Astra.
This Tuesday Uniqa announced its acquisition of 27% in Astra from Nova Trade, a company controlled by businessman Dan Adamescu. Nova Trade has retained 67% in the company.
The transaction, involving 16 million shares, was worth 361 billion ROL (10 million euros), according to the RASDAQ, where the company is listed. This puts the value of Astra at close to 37 million euros.
a??We have closely studied the Romanian insurance market and the options available to us, and have decided first to acquire a stake in Astra. We see Astra as a company that is developing rapidly and with high potential on the insurance market. Beside our plan to cover a minimum of 6% on the Central and Eastern European market, the decision was based on the economic potential and development perspectives. We are still interested in any other opportunities the Romanian insurance market has to offer,a?? said the general manager of the Uniqa group, Konstantin Klien.
Last year Uniqa had underwritten gross premiums with a value of around 3.6bn euros, from which it derived net profits of 120m euros.
Astra logged gross premiums underwritten of 48 million euros last year and net profits of 111,000 euros.
By comparison, for 68% in Omniasig, which turned over 110 million euros last year, Austrian company Wiener-Staedtische paid some 64m euros just one month ago.
In other words, for every euro of turnover, Uniqa paid 0.78 euros, while WienerStaedtische paid 0.85 euros.
This is a relatively high price, given that on mature markets, the amount paid for insurance companies is normally 30-50% of the market share - that is, between 0.3 and 0.5 euros for every euro of turnover.
vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro
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