Agos­ti­ni Ltd yes­ter­day an­nounced that it pro­pos­es to ac­quire shares in Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd through a share swap of­fer, un­der which Pres­tige share­hold­ers will re­ceive one Agos­ti­ni share for every 4.8 PHL shares held.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Agos­ti­ni said the of­fer rep­re­sent­ed a pre­mi­um of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 31 per cent over PHL’s 30-day av­er­age price, and about 27 per cent over the Pres­tige Hold­ings clos­ing price of $10.95. The of­fer will close at 4 pm on Ju­ly 21, 2025.

The news re­lease said Vic­tor E Mout­tet Ltd (VEML) is the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of both Agos­ti­ni Ltd, with 48.5 per cent or 33,525,538 shares, and Pres­tige Hold­ings with 52.9 per cent or 33,085,422 shares. VEML is 100 per cent owned by the Mout­tet fam­i­ly.

While VEML owns 33,525,538 shares in Agos­ti­ni, that com­pa­ny’s 2024 an­nu­al re­port dis­clos­es that its chair­man, Chris­t­ian Mout­tet and his broth­er, are con­nect­ed to two oth­er com­pa­nies that own shares in Agos­ti­ni. GNM Prop­er­ties owns 4.8 mil­lion Agos­ti­ni shares and JNM Prop­er­ties owns 1.6 mil­lion shares. When the shares in the three com­pa­nies—Vic­tor E Mout­tet Ltd, GNM Prop­er­ties and JNM Prop­er­ties—are com­bined, the Mout­tets own 39,925,538 shares in Agos­ti­ni, which is 57.7 per cent of the com­pa­ny.

GNM Prop­er­ties and JMM Prop­er­ties al­so own an ad­di­tion­al 9.6 mil­lion shares in Pres­tige Hold­ings, which takes the Mout­tet fam­i­ly stake in the re­saurant com­pa­ny to 42,685,422 shares. That is 68.28 per cent of Pres­tige Hold­ings.

“Chris­t­ian Mout­tet is the chair­man of VEML, as well as Agos­ti­ni Ltd and Pres­tige Hold­ings and re­cused him­self from all dis­cus­sions and or meet­ings re­lat­ed to the trans­ac­tion,” the news re­lease said.

It said to com­plete the take over, the Com­pa­nies Act re­quires Agos­ti­ni to ac­quire at least 90 per cent of all Pres­tige Hold­ings shares not held by VEML and its af­fil­i­ates or as­so­ciates at the time of the of­fer.

Agos­ti­ni is one of the most ac­quis­i­tive pub­lic com­pa­nies in the re­gion. In 2021, it pur­chased Os­car Fran­cois and In­ter­sol. Al­so in 2021, a sub­sidiary of Agos­ti­ni’s, Rosco Petroa­vance, ac­quired Process Com­po­nents Ltd. The re­sult­ing com­pa­ny is called Ro­sco­Pro­com.

Agos­ti­ni ac­quired Collins and Carlisle Lab­o­ra­to­ries in Bar­ba­dos in 2022, fol­lowed by Health Brands Ltd, a Ja­maican phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in 2023.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Agos­ti­ni’s Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners joint ven­ture ac­quired an 80 per cent stake in Chi­nook Trad­ing Cana­da Ltd. Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners is cur­rent­ly look­ing to com­plete the pur­chase of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica).

Last year, Agos­ti­ni com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of three phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and whole­sale traders in the Dutch Caribbean and in 2023 it pur­chased the Ja­maican phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­trib­u­tor Health Brands Ltd.

In its of­fer and takeover cir­cu­lar to Pres­tige Hold­ings share­hold­ers, Agos­ti­ni said Pres­tige Hold­ings “as part of the Agos­ti­ni Group, can ben­e­fit from syn­er­gies in ar­eas such as im­ports, trans­porta­tion, ware­hous­ing, mar­ket­ing and oth­er shared ser­vices.

“These syn­er­gies can lead to cost sav­ings in the above-men­tioned ar­eas through or­der­ing and pur­chas­ing goods in bulk, max­imis­ing the cur­rent fleet of trans­porta­tion ve­hi­cles by de­liv­er­ing to sim­i­lar or near-by lo­ca­tions, ful­ly util­is­ing ware­house and stor­age fa­cil­i­ties and com­bin­ing shared ser­vices to lead to a cen­tral­ized op­er­at­ing sys­tem.”

Group CEO of Agos­ti­ni Ltd, Bar­ry Davis, em­pha­sised the strate­gic align­ment of the two com­pa­nies, say­ing, “Pres­tige Hold­ings is a ma­jor part of Caribbean hos­pi­tal­i­ty. This ac­qui­si­tion un­locks im­me­di­ate syn­er­gies—from shared dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works to en­hanced scale—that will de­liv­er val­ue to both share­hold­ers and, most crit­i­cal­ly, val­ue to cus­tomers. We are com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing PHL’s op­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence while in­te­grat­ing its strengths in­to our growth frame­work.”