MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish steel maker Sidenor sent a letter stating it was considering a tender offer for part or all of the shares of train manufacturer Talgo, the latter said late on Wednesday in a filing to the stock market regulator.
Talgo did not say whether Sidenor disclosed the stake it intends to buy or at what price. Talgo shares rose 6.7% on Thursday morning.
Privately owned Sidenor, which is headquartered in the Basque Country and runs several steel mills in northern Spain, did not respond to a request for comment.
Its move comes two months after Hungarian consortium Ganz-Mavag withdrew a previous tender offer for the train maker following the Spanish government’s veto on the deal.
Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo on Thursday suggested the government would support a potential offer by a Spanish industrial firm such as Sidenor.
“Offers are coming out from the private sector, from companies that are solvent, of a markedly industrial and national nature, and this, of course, is one of the goals that we have for our strategic companies, such as Talgo,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Madrid.
Ganz-Mavag launched a tender bid in March offering 619 million euros ($672 million), or 5 euros per share, for the maker of Spain’s signature AVE high-speed trains.
The offer represented a 17% premium over Talgo’s value at the time.
The Spanish government decided to block the transaction saying it entailed risks to national security, public order and public health.
Officials said Talgo was a strategic company given its access to sensitive information on the country’s railway network and, by extension, national security.
($1 = 0.9215 euros)
(Reporting by Inti LandauroEditing by Tomasz Janowski, Kirsten Donovan)
