In a transparency declaration, UCB reported that Vanguard Health Care Fund (US based) acquired 5,821,811 UCB shares with voting rights (on a total number of 183,365,052) on March 30, 2012, representing 3.17% of UCB’s share capital, thereby crossing the threshold of notification of 3%.
Our View:
On 30 March around 7 million UCB shares (3.8%) were placed via a book build as the holdings Pharmahold, Cosylva and Compar Finance (linked to the shareholding families of AB Inbev and Lhoist) sold their entire position in UCB. We refer to our morning note of 30 March 2012 on UCB and to the views from colleague Wim Hoste on AB Inbev in the same note. In a transparency declaration of April 5, these holdings officially declared to have sold their entire stake in UCB.
The only other institutional investor holdingmore than 3% of the outstanding UCB shares is Capital Research and Management Company which holds 21.7 million shares (11.84%). The Janssen family shares grouped in the Tubize holding holds 36.2% and the Schwarz family 1.35%. UCB holds around 5.9 million (3.22%) of treasury shares and another 4.8 million options which would represent an additional voting right of 2.62%.
For a precise overview of the control by the Tubize Holding and its concert agreements on the UCB shareholding, please connect to our holding analyst Tom Simonts.