Chinese insurer has sent a list of questions and may rebel
Chinese insurer Ping An yesterday threatened to vote against the proposed sale to BNP Paribas of Fortis’s Belgian banking operations, increasing the risk that the deal may founder, the FT reports.
A Belgian court ordered the vote, set for February 11, after activist shareholders argued that Fortis failed to consult them in the hastily negotiated deals to rescue Fortis last October. The deals led to the nationalisation of Fortis’s Dutch assets and the BNP deal.
Last week, the Belgian government, BNP and Fortis agreed changes to the transaction to make it more attractive to Fortis’s rebellious shareholders.
However, Stefan Odeurs, a partner at White & Case, the law firm advising Ping An, said the Chinese insurer had sent a list of questions to the Belgian government on the new deal.
“If we don’t get a reply by the end of the week our client is currently intending to vote against the transactions,” he said. He declined to specify what the questions were.
Deminor, the Belgian shareholders’ group, yesterday said it would advise investors to vote against the new deal, which went “in the right direction” but contained too much uncertainty.
Fortis also announced that Ping An’s Louis Cheung had resigned from the Fortis board.
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