15.02.2011

Cramo buys Cramo

Finnish based Cramo has bought out Cramo Management – a holding company owned by its top executives. The transaction will be in the form of a share swap.

Cramo executive committee members – chief executive, deputy chief executive and chief financial officer - established Cramo Management Oy in June 2009. The company then acquired 316,288 Cramo Plc on the market – funded with €500,000 of their own money and a €2 million loan from Cramo Plc.

The loan agreement between Cramo Management and Cramo included an obligation to repay the loan prematurely in the event that the Cramo share price went above a certain level. This occurred yesterday – February 14th.

The directors of Cramo Plc have decided that the loan will be repaid through a share swap whereby the company acquires all the shares in Cramo Management plus the repayment of the loan in exchange for new shares in Cramo.

Before this transaction there were 31,354,189 Cramo shares in circulation, with none held by the company itself. After the deal is completed there will be 31,574,677 shares, out of which the Company will hold 316,288 shares indirectly through Cramo Management.

A further 374,532 new Cramo shares will also be issued to Arrex Beteiligungs-GmbH in connection with the acquisition of Theisen Baumaschinen taking the total to 31,949,209 shares.

Vertikal Comment

Confused?

Cramo does not say what the main aim of the Cramo Management deal was back in 2009 although it would appear to be some kind of exotic share option deal in which the executives share in the downside as well as the upside?

Interesting.