Shares in Puma rose almost 10 percent on Thursday on market talk the French, furniture-to-luxury-handbags group PPR could launch a bid for the German sportswear group, traders told Reuters.
“There are rumors in the market that Pinault Printemps could make an offer for Puma next week,” a trader said. Another trader also said that PPR was interested in Puma.
Puma and its major shareholder Mayfair, who holds more than 25 percent in the company, declined to comment to Reuters. PPR (formerly Pinault-Printemps-Redoute) also did not want to comment.
The volume of total Puma shares traded exceeded the 90 day average more than 6 times.
PPR owns Gucci Group, which includes designers Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent. It also owns the catalog La Redoute and French stores Printemps and FNAC.
PPR reportedly has plenty of firepower to make medium or large acquisitions, although indicated it was in no hurry to spend any money. At the end of 2006 PPR had roughly 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) of cash on its balance sheet as well as undrawn credit lines of almost 5 billion euros. Puma's market capitalisation is about 5.25 billion euros based on the number of shares issued.
