Vinted wants to swallow Rebelle

The takeover comes as a surprise, as Rebelle had only recently gone public.

The owner of the secondhand online market Vinted is contacting Rebelle in Germany, according to fashionunited.de. The company reportedly made a takeover offer to that effect on Monday. According to the offer, Vinted is offering current Rebelle AB shareholders 14.10 Swedish kronor, the equivalent of about 1.35 euros, per share. This represents an increase of 8.46% compared to the closing price on Friday last week, the last trading day before the takeover offer. The total amount of the offer is thus around 315 million Swedish kronor, with just under 22.4 million Rebelle shares outstanding (30 million euros). The offer period will continue until August 19.

Vinted already has a majority as several major Rebelle owners, who together hold 64.7% of the shares, have already made "irrevocable commitments" to accept the offer prior to the bid. In addition to Max Schönemann, Rebelle's CEO, these are the main investors HCS Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Friheden Invest A/S and Deutsche Balaton AG. For the takeover to be successful, Vinted must be able to acquire at least 90% of the shares and receive the approval of the relevant competition authorities. Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga wants to combine the qualities of the two companies and explains the acquisition plan: "By combining Rebelle's expertise in this segment with Vinted's geographic reach and large membership base, we see great potential to provide a higher quality offering to consumers:inside and ultimately drive the adoption of secondhand."

According to the company, Vinted was founded in 2008 and operates a C2C secondhand marketplace that is currently accessible in 16 European and North American countries and has more than 65 million users.