GrandVision IPO: Global optician eyes €1.3bn for float
HAL Trust, the owner of global optician GrandVision, is looking to raise as much as €1.3bn (£971m) through the company’s initial public offering on Euronext, it emerged yesterday.
GrandVision is the world’s largest optical retailer and operates under a gamut of national brands, including Vision Express in the UK. It owns over 5,600 stores across 43 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
The institutional offer period runs until 5 February, the company said in a statement yesterday. Shares are expected to begin trading on the Amsterdam stock exchange the next day, valuing the company at up to €5.4bn. The company aims to pay dividends of 25 to 50 per cent of profits, it said in its prospectus.
Hal, an investment vehicle belonging to the Dutch Van der Vorm family, has a set an indicative price range for GrandVision of between €17.50 and €21.50 per share. That values the share placing at between €893m and €1.1bn, or as much as €1.3bn if an over-allotment option is fully exercised.
ABN Amro and JP Morgan Securities are acting a joint global coordinators on the listing. The pair are joined by Barclays, HSBC and BNP Paribas as joint bookrunners. ING Bank and Rabobank are serving as joint lead managers, and Kepler Cheuvreux and Kempen & Co are co-lead managers.
BEHIND THE DEAL
JP MORGAN SECURITIES | GEORGE HOLST
1 Holst is the head of EMEA retail at JP Morgan Securities. He has spent 16 years at JP Morgan since joining in 1999 from Baring Brothers, where he started his career as an M&A banker.
2 He is working on GrandVision’s IPO alongside JP Morgan counterparts Peter Kerckhoffs, head of Netherlands IB, and Paul Mihailovitch, managing director of ECM.
3 When not working on deals, Holst spends most of his time playing sport. He enjoys skiing and golf, but is also a self-confessed “boxing addict”.