Doosan Group withdrew its controversial plan to merge construction equipment firm Doosan Bobcat into money-losing Doosan Robotics upon strong opposition from retail investors and warnings from authorities, but questions still remain over the group’s ongoing efforts to restructure its governance of units.
Bobcat and Robotics announced on Thursday they both decided to annul their contract to exchange their shares for the merger, scrapping their merger proposal.
Doosan Group initially proposed to spin off Bobcat from its parent Doosan Enerbility, a plant facilities company, and merge it into Robotics under a ratio of exchanging 100 Bobcat shares with 63 Robotics shares.
This, however, faced strong backlash from not only retail investors but also financial companies and the National Pension Service, as they complained about 추천 assigning greater value to the shares of the struggling robotics firm.
Despite scrapping the merger plan, the Doosan companies said in letters to investors that the group will proceed with spinning off Bobcat from Enerbility and make the construction equipment maker a subsidiary of Robotics, citing the necessity of “giving Enerbility capital flexibility for investments.”
Enerbility explained that this spinoff is essential because Bobcat has a debt of 700 billion won ($525 million) and separating this from Enerbility’s financial books will improve the company’s capabilities to attract additional investments for its nuclear energy businesses with healthier fiscal prudence.