Chilean investment company Quinenco has sold 4.2m shares in Paris-listed cable manufacturer Nexans for €336.3m.
The accelerated bookbuild was not expected with Quinenco having held its stake for more than a decade without ever indicating an intention to sell.
An extended wall-crossing exercise took place across two days to help uncover interest from less active investor accounts.
As a result of the wall-crossing the deal was well covered on indications at launch, including support from quality long-only names.
Formal coverage came around 15 minutes after launch with a final book of over 80 lines multiple times subscribed.
The deal priced at €80 per share, a 9.4% discount to Tuesday's €88.30 close.
A banker involved said several elements fed into the discount, including the unexpected nature of the offer and the stock’s illiquid situation – the deal represents 9.6% of the company and around 25 days’ trading.
A second banker said many were also applying a bigger discount due to the illiquid holiday period coming up over Easter. Even so, a 1:1 relationship between the percentage of the company offered and the discount is reasonable compared to recent blocks.
Allocations were skewed to shareholders and wall-crossed accounts with anchors and long-only taking more than half.
Demand was largely from Continental Europe with some UK investors looking to build positions.
The top 10 took 60% and the top 20 took 80%.
The trade weighed on shares on Wednesday, closing down 7.1% at €82.05.
Quinenco will remain as a shareholder with 19.2% held via subsidiary Invexans and will enter a 180-day lock-up that a third banker said was aimed at demonstrating the transaction was merely a trim and not a step towards an exit.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Societe Generale were joint bookrunners. Lazard was financial adviser to Invexans.