“It was neither accepted nor rejected.”

Sidenor and Talgo’s main shareholder, Trilantic, continue negotiations for 29.9% of the company. Last week, the steel company submitted a €150 million offer to acquire the entire stake of the British fund, and it is currently still being analyzed, sources close to the negotiations confirmed. “No offer was rejected or accepted,” they assured this newspaper, following rumors that Sidenor’s proposal had already fallen on deaf ears.

Thus, Trilantic continues to evaluate the offer, which is much less attractive than the offer of the Hungarian Magyar Vagon for 100% of the company. Sidenor’s proposal would value the company at 500 million euros, 20% less than the 620 million euros of the Hungarian bid, which the government stopped under the pretext of anti-takeover protection, citing national security concerns. When asked whether the British fund was already preparing any counter-proposal, the newspaper did not receive an answer.

Sidenor, which was advised on the transaction by Alantra, did not provide any further information about the negotiations. The intention of the industrial group, led by José Antonio Hainaga, is to become the main shareholder of the train manufacturer, but with the assistance of the Basque government and SEPI, which will seek to retain the remaining 10% of Pegasus, a company that Trilantic shares with the Abello family and some members the Oriol family (founders of Talgo), in which they concentrate 40.2% of the capital of the Spanish train manufacturer.

This is the solution that Talgo’s main shareholders have found: to exit the company in the absence of a takeover bid. The railway builder urgently needs to attract an investor to support the company’s future by providing it with industrial capacity to fulfill the orders in its portfolio.