The Directors of Kenol Kobil have recommended that their shareholders accept a buyout offer from Rubis Energie as more details have been availed about the deal.

#inthepapers Rubis get 97%shareholder support for their takeover of @KenolKobil and will compulsorily acquire the remaining shares at the same price and delist the company from the Nairobi Securities Exchange. @NSE_PLC https://t.co/wYgye3C3zH

— Bankelele (@bankelele) March 8, 2019

Kenol is second largest in the country of 60 oil marketers. It has 13% market share boosted by 47% share in civil aviation. In retail, they have a 10% share behind Vivo/Shell and Total. Rubis is listed on the Paris Euronext Exchange. It has grown in 15 years by acquiring and managing companies and all its individual businesses are now profitable. SBG Securities have confirmed that Rubis have enough funds for the takeover.

Deal Excerpts

Special Shareholders

• The offer is a 50% premium price and it is billed as offering shareholders a 100% cash return without broker charges.
• Rubis owns just under 24% of Kenol that it bought from Wells, on October 2018 at Kshs 15.3 per share. If it takes over the company before October 2019, it will pay Wells an equivalent of the difference that other shareholders are receiving over and above what Wells received.
• If Kenol announces any dividend now, an amount equivalent of the dividend shall be deducted from the amount due to be paid to any shareholder.
• Kenol shareholders can only accept the offer in full, not partially. Kenol can vary its offer up to 5 days before the closing date and any shareholder who had accepted will be deemed to have accepted the new terms.
• Rubis has received irrevocable undertakings from Tasmin Ltd with 4.2% and CEO David Ohana with 5.7% comprising 88 million shares he was granted in an ESOP in January 2017.

Way Forward:  

• The offer closes Feb 18, 2019, with results announced on March 12.
• Rubis reserves the right to extend the offer, with the approval of the CMA, but not beyond July 30, 2019. 
• Shareholders, local and foreign, individual and corporate have been invited to register their interest in accepting the offer electronically on Rubis site  – this takes care of an issue cited in the stalled Victus-Unga buyout in which no response was received from 8% of their shareholder), as either they did not receive their documents through their post office mailboxes in time or did not respond, perhaps because they hoped that a better offer for their Unga shares would materialize.
• If Rubis attains 90% support, they will force other shareholders to accept, and move on with delisting. If they gain 75% support but fall short of 90%, they may seek shareholder and regulatory approval to delist. Rubis will vote in favour of that and, if 75% approve and not more than 10% oppose it, they will proceed to delist Kenol. If it does not delist, it will remain listed until approvals are obtained or CMA asks the NSE to delist the shares. They caution that if Kenol is not delisted, after the conclusion of this deal, the remaining shareholders will find that the liquidity of their shares will go down, – noting that less than 0.06% shares traded each in a six month period prior to the deal announcement.