High Times in Amsterdam for M&A Bankers

Is Tulip mania sweeping the Netherlands again? Private equity funds and international conglomerates are practically tripping over themselves to pay top dollar for Dutch companies.

The French food giant Danone announced today it plans to buy Netherlands-based Numico, a large baby food maker, for $16.8 billion in cash, or 38 percent more than yesterday's closing price. That's a lot of dough for a company that claims 40 percent of the baby food market in Europe, where fertility has been on a gradual decline for years.

Also in the news today is a stellar deal for shareholders of Univar, a Dutch chemicals distributor that does most of its business in North America. The European buyout firm CVC Capital will pay $2.2 billion for Univar, which is a 37 percent premium to the stock's price on Friday. Its shares soared nearly that much today in Amsterdam.

The Dutch supermarket giant Ahold sold off its U.S. Foodservice business to private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Clayton Dubliner for $7.1 billion in a deal that closed last week. K.K.R. also dipped its toes in the Dutch waters last year when it was part of a consortium that bought the business media firm VNU at a healthy premium.

But the granddaddy of all Dutch deals, of course, is the pending sale of ABN Amro in what could amount to be the biggest banking deal ever. With two offers currently on the table, ABN could soon end up in the hands of Barclays Bank or of a consortium of European banks led by Royal Bank of Scotland. Either way, its shareholders will walk away with more money than they had in ABN shares before the bidding war began in April.

And that might not be the end of it. A research report from the European bank Rabobank and Robeco today listed six Dutch blue-chip takeover targets: Ahold, Akzo Nobel, DSM, Hagemeyer, KPN, and Ree-Elsevier, according to the Financial Times.

by Megan Barnett