Demerger of METRO GROUP still planned for the middle of the year - Court allows swift implementation
(PresseBox) (Düsseldorf, )"With this court order in relation to the legal challenges of resolution of the Annual General Meeting, we have hit an important milestone. The court's decision is clearly in line with the wishes of the overwhelming majority of our shareholders, who voted for the demerger of the group at the Annual General Meeting", says Olaf Koch, Chairman of the Management Board of METRO AG. "In recent weeks we have consistently worked on the implementation of the demerger, and have now turned onto the final straight. The demerger can then take effect in the middle of the year, as planned. We expect the future METRO AG to list on the public markets Mid-July."
A few shareholders, including the MediaMarktSaturn minority shareholder Convergenta, filed lawsuits against the resolutions passed at the shareholders' meeting in the wake of the Annual General Meeting in February 2017. As a result, METRO AG initiated a socalled motion for expedited registration (Freigabeverfahren) at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (Oberlandesgericht) in order to have the demerger registered in the commercial register despite the pending lawsuits and to take the future METRO AG to the public markets. By today's court order, the court has ruled that the pending legal challenges do not preclude the registration of the demerger in the commercial register and thereby the demerger from taking effect.
Following the ruling, METRO GROUP will initiate the registration of the demerger in the commercial register and will promptly publish the stock market prospectus for the future METRO AG.