The US electronics and defense group Heico has finalized the takeover bid for the French technology company Exxelia, until now controlled by a British fund, as the French state has not opposed it.
The completion of the transaction, revealed on Friday by La Tribune, was announced the day before by the American group. The latter had closed an agreement at the end of July to acquire Exxelia for 453 million euros and the assumption of 14 million euros of debt, according to a press release.
The issue of this acquisition had become political in the autumn when the deputy RN Alexandre Loubet had accused in the chamber of “selling to foreign interests” the French “industrial flagships”.
Components used in the F-35
The State has the ability to block the takeover of French companies by foreign companies when they are of a strategic nature. He had done it in particular for the Photonis night vision specialist that the American company Teledyne wanted to acquire. The company was eventually bought by the Paris-based investment fund HLD. But for Exxelia, the general delegate of Armaments of France, Emmanuel Chiva, had indicated that the French offers had not been “up to the task”.
Exxelia, a French industrial group of 2,100 people, is a manufacturer of “precision components and subsystems” used in many advanced industrial fields such as aviation, defense, space, medicine…
Some of its components, such as capacitors, are used in particular in the F-35, the ultra-modern American fighter jet, and in many European aeronautical programmes, in particular the Ariane 6. Since 2015, the group has been controlled by the British fund IK Partners, which owned the majority of the capital.
On Thursday, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire announced that France was going to perpetuate the reduction to 10% of the control threshold for foreign investment in companies in strategic sectors. The activation control threshold was lowered from 25 to 10% in 2020 to protect companies weakened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Source: BFM TV
