SGS Is In Talks to Combine With French Testing Firm Bureau Veritas #FrenchFinance

(Bloomberg) — SGS SA is in advanced talks to combine with Bureau Veritas SA, people with knowledge of the matter said, in a deal that would create a European testing and certification company with a combined market value of almost $35 billion.

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Geneva-based SGS and France’s Bureau Veritas are working on the final details of a transaction that could be announced in the coming weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Shares of SGS have risen more than a quarter over the last 12 months, giving the company a market value of 17.6 billion Swiss francs ($19.3 billion). Bureau Veritas is up by a similar amount over the period for a market cap of €13.5 billion ($13.9 billion).

Any deal would need the support of investment firm Wendel SE, which is Bureau Veritas’s largest shareholder with a 26.5% stake, Bloomberg-compiled data show. It would also likely need to be vetted by the French government. The Lac1 fund, managed by state-owned Bpifrance SACA, last year bought a 4% holding in Bureau Veritas.

While talks are at an advanced stage, they could still be delayed or falter, the people said. A representative for Neuilly-sur-Seine-based Bureau Veritas didn’t immediately provide a comment. A spokesperson for SGS couldn’t immediately be reached for comment outside regular business hours in Europe.

Established in 1828, Bureau Veritas specializes in laboratory testing, inspection and certification services. It has a presence in 140 countries and about 83,000 employees globally, according to its website. In December, the company replaced Vivendi SE in France’s blue-chip CAC 40 index after the media conglomerate split into four separate entities.

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Stuart Gordon and Evgeniy Batchvarov wrote in a note in November that SGS’s new chief executive officer, Géraldine Picaud, appeared to be more aggressive on mergers and acquisitions, as the company seeks to reverse broad share-price underperformance versus its testing, inspection and certification peers over the past decade.

“I need to participate actively in consolidation,” Picaud said in an interview in November. She said at the time that not a single player in the testing, inspection and certification industry accounts for more than 5% of the total market.

–With assistance from Jan-Henrik Förster.

(Updates with Picaud’s earlier comment in final paragraph.)

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