MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - Financial investor and major shareholder Cinven wants to take over Europe's largest laboratory services provider Synlab completely. It presented a concrete offer on Friday. Cinven is thus following up its expression of interest from March with action. The offer price of ten euros is in line with Synlab's expectations. Cinven and Synlab have already concluded an investment agreement in this context.

Synlab's share price rose by 23 percent to 9.98 euros as a result of the news. This was still two cents below the offer price. At barely more than eight euros, the share price had previously slipped to its lowest level since March - investors had apparently lost faith in a takeover. Synlab had benefited from the high demand for laboratory tests during the Corona pandemic. The company's share price had climbed to a record 25 euros by November 2021.

The purchase offer of 10 euros per share brings Synlab's valuation to around 2.2 billion euros. The corresponding offer was published on Friday by the holding company Ephios Luxembourg S.à r.l., which is linked to the financial investor Cinven. There will be no minimum acceptance threshold.

Synlab had already mentioned ten euros as a possible price after an initial expression of interest in March. The major shareholder holds around 43 percent of Synlab shares. The transaction is supported by the other core shareholders such as Novo Holdings and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board.

Synlab founder Bartholomäus Wimmer has also agreed to sell 60 percent of his shares in the offering and reinvest the remaining shares, he said. As a result, Cinven has already secured access to nearly 80 percent of the shares, it said.

Synlab's management and supervisory boards said the offer represented a "potentially attractive exit opportunity for short-term or risk-averse investors," but that the offer price did not reflect the long-term value of the company. They know Cinven as a long-time, supportive shareholder and expect a "good further cooperation."

The two boards have therefore reportedly approved the signing of the investment agreement and are "sympathetic" to Cinven's intended offer. The investment agreement also stipulates that the current board will continue to manage the company and that its headquarters will remain in Munich.

Cinven had first brought Synlab to the stock exchange in the spring of 2021. At the time, the issue price was 18 euros, valuing the company at around four billion euros. Now the laboratory service provider could already disappear from the stock exchange again. The story is similar to the takeover bid by the investor EQT for Suse. The software provider had also been brought to the stock exchange in the spring of 2021, before EQT initiated the roll backwards this year. The companies cited business problems as the reason for the withdrawal from the Borse.

Synlab says it is the market leader in medical diagnostics and specialty testing in Europe. In the meantime, the company has launched a cost-cutting program, and 21 million euros were reportedly saved in this way in the first half of the year. Among other things, the group had divested its activities in Switzerland, and in Mexico all activities were combined at one site./jcf/nas/zb