NEW YORK, March 28, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- P. Schoenfeld
Asset Management LP ("PSAM") today issued the following letter to
the Vivendi (EPA: VIV) (the "Company") Management Board, in
response to the Company's letter, which PSAM received on
Friday, March 27, 2015:
The full text of the letter follows:
Members of the Management Board: Arnaud de Puyfontaine,
Herve Philippe and Stephane Roussel
Chairman of the Supervisory Board: Vincent Bollore
Vivendi S.A.
42 avenue de Friedland
75380 Paris CEDEX 08
France
Dear Sirs,
We hereby acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 27 March 2015 relating to the enforcement of
French law 86-1067 dated 30 September
1986.
We are very disappointed to have received this letter at a time
when we are exercising our rights as a shareholder of Vivendi S.A.
(''the Company'') in accordance with French law.
Indeed, we notified you on 3 July
2014 that the funds and accounts under our management
crossed above the 0.5% threshold in relation to the total number of
shares outstanding and voting rights of the Company. We did not
receive any warning from you at that time. Now, as a result of our
decision to propose two resolutions to shareholders, we have
received a letter whose purpose seems to be to intimidate us. We
consider this behavior totally unacceptable. In addition, we wonder
whether you are also attempting to intimidate other shareholders
who are willing to support our resolutions.
Moreover, the Company, through its Management Board, is
entrusted with a detailed view of share capital allocation in
accordance with article 5.2 of its bylaws. In this context, we
expect that you monitor closely any risks that may be triggered by
any breach of French law 86-1067 dated 30
September 1986, and carry out appropriate diligence on a
regular basis. Given the lack of transparency regarding the level
of foreign ownership of Vivendi and your explicit threat to
litigate against us in the event the 20% threshold is breached, we
hereby request that you publicly disclose all information that you
possess in relation to the application of article 40 of French law
86-1067 dated 30 September 1986, with
respect to foreign ownership and historical monitoring of the 20%
threshold.
We would also like to receive confirmation that the same letter
delivered to us was also delivered to each of the Vivendi
shareholders who were deemed foreigners under this law, including
the threat to initiate litigation against any such shareholders. We
believe that any letter solely directed at us would be
inappropriate.
We reserve our right to claim damages, both as a result of your
interference in our proposal of additional resolutions to
shareholders and as a result of your lack of diligence to ensure
compliance with French law 86-1067 dated 30
September 1986, on a timely basis.
We consider the speculations at the end of your letter,
regarding our willingness to favor the acquisition of Vivendi
assets by interested third parties to be libelous or at best,
gratuitous. This is especially the case since you seem to have
disclosed the content of your letter to the press. We also reserve
our right to claim damages in this respect.
Going forward, we hope you will revert to more appropriate
behavior in dealing with our requests. The sole purpose of these
resolutions is to present two proposals to Vivendi shareholders so
that they may individually decide what they consider to be in the
best interest of the Company.
Sincerely yours,
Peter Schoenfeld
Chief Executive Officer
About PSAM
PSAM was founded by Peter M. Schoenfeld and has been providing
investment advisory services since 1997, with offices in
New York and London. PSAM has approximately $3.4 billion in assets under management and
invests in both equity and credit securities in global event driven
opportunities.
Additional Information
This press release is for
informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute, and
should not be construed as, an offer to sell, a solicitation of any
offer to buy, an offer to purchase or a solicitation of consents
with regard to any securities of Vivendi (the "Company", and such
securities, the "Securities").
This release may contain forward-looking statements. Such
statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking
terminology such as "believes," "expects," "intends," "may,"
"estimates," "will," "should," "plans" or "anticipates" or the
negative thereof or other variations thereon or comparable
terminology, or by discussions of strategy. These forward-looking
statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could
cause actual results to differ materially from the suggested by the
forward-looking statements. The information provided in this press
release is derived from PSAM's analysis and subjective views on the
Company and its Securities. Other persons, including the Company,
may have different analysis and views on the information provided
herein.
No reliance is accepted on this press release and PSAM disclaims
any liability in relation to this press release. Investors shall
only rely on their own assessment prior to taking any decision in
relation to the Company and/or the Securities. PSAM do not
undertake any obligation to publicly release any revisions to these
forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after
the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated
events.
For Investor Inquiries:
MacKenzie Partners, Inc.
Dan Burch/Bob Marese
+1-212-929-5500 / +44 20 3026 2807
dburch@mackenziepartners.com / bmarese@mackenziepartners.com
For Media Inquiries:
Image 7
Anne- France Malrieu
Ph : + 33 1 53 70 74 66
C : + 33 6 89 8 761 18
afmalrieu@image7.fr
Estelle Guillot-Tantay
Ph : + 33 1 53 70 74 93
C : + 33 6 87 60 49 58
egt@image7.fr
ASC Advisors
Steve Bruce/Taylor Ingraham
+1-203-992-1230
sbruce@ascadvisors.com / tingraham@ascadvisors.com
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