Schoenherr has advised publicly traded, global sugar, starch and fruit processor AGRANA Beteiligungs–Aktiengesellschaft as issuer on its successful rights offering of 1,420,204 new shares, combined with a secondary offering of 500,000 existing AGRANA shares held by Südzucker AG, one of AGRANA’s core shareholders.
This is the first equity capital market transaction in the Austrian market in 2017, and the first deal of its kind in Austria following the entry into force of the European Market Abuse Regulation.
The transaction had an overall deal volume of approximately €192m. Schoenherr supported AGRANA by providing comprehensive transactional advice on structuring as well as drafting the prospectus and negotiating the transaction documentation with the underwriters and AGRANA’s core shareholders.
“With the Austrian market having seen only few equity capital markets transactions in the last two years, AGRANA’s rights offering is unquestionably one of the more prominent recent ECM deals,” said Ursula Rath, Schoenherr capital markets partner, who led the team advising AGRANA.
AGRANA is a globally operating Vienna-based industrial processor of agricultural raw materials with business operations in three segments: sugar, starch and fruit. The company is a global leader for fruit preparations and the leading producer of fruit juice concentrates in Europe. With around 8,500 FTEs based at 53 production facilities around the world, AGRANA maintains a global presence and generated consolidated revenue of almost €2.5bn in 2016/15 and is listed in the prime market segment of the Vienna Stock Exchange.
The Schoenherr core team was led by Ursula Rath (partner, capital markets) and further consisted of Stefan Paulmayer (counsel, capital markets) and Peter Feyl (partner, capital markets). The core team was supported by Thomas Kulnigg (partner, corporate/M&A), Martina Hiebl (associate, capital markets) and Sascha Smets (associate, corporate/M&A).
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