Tel Aviv – Nestle To Buy Rest Of Israeli Foodmaker Osem For $840.5 Million

Tel Aviv – Nestle has agreed to buy out shareholders of Osem for about $840 million (573.46 million pound) and take the Israeli foodmaker private, the two companies announced on Thursday.

Swiss food giant Nestle already owns 63.7 percent of Osem, Israel’s largest listed food maker.

It has offered 3.3 billion shekels ($840.5 million) or 82.5 shekels per share for the remainder, the companies said in a filing to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE).

That’s well above Wednesday’s closing price of 65.71 shekels and higher than an offer of 80 shekels it made in November.

“Upon completion of the deal …the company will become a private completely fully owned by Nestle.” Osem told the TASE.

The deal is subject to approval from Osem’s minority shareholders and the company has scheduled a shareholder’s meeting for March 17.

Nestle in a statement on its website said it planned to “…continue to partner with Osem management to develop the company”.

Osem’s shares surged on the news and were trading up 22 percent at 80.23 shekels at 1024GMT. Nestle was up 0.3 percent to 75.40 euros.

Osem has a market value of 7.3 billion shekels and produces and sells products including pasta, salad dressings and ice cream under the Nestle and other brand names.

It has nine factories across Israel and for the first nine months of 2015 it reported a net profit of 294 million shekels on sales of 3.2 billion.‎