Bluegreen Vacations set to turn private
BBX Capital Corporation has announced that it intends to take US vacation ownership company Bluegreen Vacations Corporation (“Bluegreen”) private through a statutory short-form merger under Florida law.
In the merger, a newly-formed subsidiary of Woodbridge Holdings Corporation (“Woodbridge”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of BBX Capital, would merge with and into Bluegreen, with Bluegreen being the surviving company of the merger.
As a result of the merger, each share of Bluegreen’s common stock outstanding at the effective time of the merger, other than shares beneficially owned by BBX Capital and shareholders who duly exercise and perfect appraisal rights in accordance with Florida law, will be converted into the right to receive $16 per share in cash.
BBX Capital currently beneficially owns approximately 90% of Bluegreen’s common stock. Under Florida law, the holder of more than 80% of the outstanding shares of Bluegreen’s common stock, may effect the merger without the approval of, or action by, the Board of Directors or any other shareholders of Bluegreen.
Accordingly, the Board of Directors of Bluegreen has not acted to approve or disapprove the merger, and the shareholders of Bluegreen will not be asked to approve or disapprove the merger or be furnished a proxy in connection with the merger.
If the merger is completed, Bluegreen’s common stock will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, will no longer be publicly traded, and will be deregistered under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”).
The purpose of the merger is to take Bluegreen private. While Bluegreen went public in November 2017, the anticipated benefits of becoming a public company were not fully realised and the costs and management time associated with being a public company were significant.
It was anticipated that there would be sufficient liquidity in the trading of Bluegreen’s common stock, but the concentration of public holders of Bluegreen’s common stock by a few large shareholders adversely impacted the liquidity of the stock.
