05 October 2017

Squeeze-out at BWT AG (Best Water Technology)

by Attorney-at-law Martin Arendts, M.B.L.-HSG

The squeeze-out resolution, passed at the Annual General Meeting of the water technology company BWT AG on 14 August 2017, has now been registered. As the company reported, the decision of the regional court of Wels (Landesgericht Wels), which is responsible for the registration of the minority shareholder exclusion, was served on the company, granting the resolution to exclude the minority shareholders pursuant to § 1 GesAusG and transfer its shares to WAB Privatstiftung as principal shareholder to be registered. By registering the decision in the commercial register, all shares of the minority shareholders of BWT AG were transferred to WAB Privatstiftung in accordance with § 5 Abs 4 GesAusG. The appropriateness of the cash compensation amount will be judicially reviewed in a review process.

There was doubts about the legality of the squeeze-out decision - as reported: https://spruchverfahren.blogspot.de/2017/08/squeeze-out-beschluss-bei-der-bwt-ag.html. Thus, the appraiser was not appointed by the company's court, as required by law, but by the principal shareholder. The 90% threshold, required for a squeeze-out under Austrian law, was achieved only with the company's repurchase of own shares.

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