Austrian oil and gas company OMV (Vienna / Austria; www.omv.com) has made moves in its plans to take over Hungarian counterpart MOL (Budapest / Hungary; www.mol.hu) for the equivalent of EUR 14 bn. At present, OMV holds 20.2% of MOL shares and has made an offer of HUF 32,000 (EUR 128) per share for the remainder accompanied by a corresponding declaration of intent. At the same time, the Austrian company is looking to hold talks with the government in Budapest to accelerate the bid process.

Rumours of a takeover initially surfaced after OMV increased its interest to 18%. The MOL board then introduced countermeasures in the form of considerable share buybacks. A full takeover will be very difficult because MOL's articles of association limit the voting rights of foreign companies to 10%. In addition, the management is said to have control of 40% of the voting rights and is thought to be against a takeover. Furthermore, Budapest is preparing a law that will prohibit the purchase of strategically important companies by state-dominated foreign companies. However, an OMV board spokesman expects these two obstacles to be declared invalid by the European Commission. The present offer is targeted at the holders of the remaining 40% of the shares.

If the transaction comes to a successful conclusion, OMV aims to implement synergies of around EUR 400m a year. A takeover would affect downstream petrochemicals activities involving Borealis (Vienna / Austria; www.borealisgroup.com) on the OMV side, and Tiszai Vegyi Kombinat (TVK, Tiszaujváros / Hungary; www.tvk.hu) and Slovnaft (Bratislava / Slovakia; www.slovnaft.sk) at MOL.