Gamesa shareholders ratify merger with Siemens

Gamesa has held an Extraordinary General Meeting at which its shareholders amply ratified the resolutions needed to close the merger with Siemens Wind Power, specifically casting 99.75% of votes in favour.

By virtue of this transaction, Gamesa will absorb Siemens's wind power assets in exchange for newly-issued shares in Gamesa. In the wake of the deal, Siemens will own 59% of the new company, while Iberdrola will retain an 8% interest.

The company's shareholders also approved the distribution of a special cash dividend of €3.591 per share (before withholdings), to be paid out by Gamesa after the merger closes.

During his speech, Ignacio Martín, Executive Chairman of Gamesa, stressed that the merger will create a world-leading player in the wind industry:

"Today's meeting marks the start of a new era, one that will give Gamesa greater scale, thanks to the merger with Siemens WP, reinforcing it as a global leader in both the onshore and offshore segments."

He also underscored the highly complementary nature of the merger in terms of the two entities' geographic footprints and product and technology portfolios. He said that the resulting firm would have a truly global reach, with a presence in all the main wind markets and reinforced industrial capabilities on all five continents.

Providing a numerical snapshot of what the resulting company will look like, Gamesa's Chairman said that the enlarged firm would boast installed worldwide capacity of close to 70 GW, an orderbook valued at €21 billion, revenue of around €10 billion, adjusted EBIT of €915 million and roughly 22,000 employees globally.

Now that the transaction has been approved by Gamesa's shareholders, the next steps are to secure confirmation from the Spanish securities market regulator (the CNMV) of Siemens's exemption from having to launch a public takeover bid and then obtain authorization from the anti-trust authorities.