PARIS — A Chinese-led consortium on Monday raised its offer for Club Méditerranée above that of a rival bid by an Italian investor, throwing the fate of the French resort operator into limbo for at least a few more weeks.
Fosun International, an industrial and financial conglomerate based in Shanghai, together with its French partner, Ardian, said its Gaillon Invest II vehicle was offering €23.50, or $29.30, a share for Club Med, valuing the company, including its convertible bonds, at €897 million. It said the offer was about 2.2 percent above a rival bid by Global Resorts, the consortium led by the Italian investor Andrea C. Bonomi.
“We are convinced that our offer for Club Med is the only one that will enable the company to become a world leader in the tourism industry,” Jiannong Qian, the head of Gaillon Invest II, said in a statement. He added that the group would “remain the partner of Club Méditerranée in the long run, in order to work together on its development in fast-growing markets,” including China and Brazil, “and strengthen its positions in mature countries, especially in France.”
The new bid was given additional heft by the participation of a Brazilian investor, the billionaire Nelson Tanure, whose Docas Investimentos has agreed to take up to a 20 percent of Gaillon Invest II, with Fosun remaining the majority shareholder.
Fosun, led by the Chinese tycoon Guo Guangchang, and its allies had been given a Monday deadline by France’s market watchdog to raise their offer or walk away from Club Med after Global Resorts raised its bid to €23 a share last month. The Global Resorts group, led by Mr. Bonomi’s InvestIndustrial private equity firm, has been fighting the Chinese-led consortium since June, and recently raised its firepower by bringing on board the private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.
Club Med’s shares were down 0.5 percent on Monday afternoon at €23.78. The French market regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers, said in a statement that it was giving Mr. Bonomi’s consortium until Dec. 17 to respond.
“We are examining the situation,” Daniel Yea, a spokesman for Mr. Bonomi, said, declining further comment.
The Fosun-led offer already has the backing of Club Med’s management. Henri Giscard d’Estaing, the Club Med chief executive, enlisted the Chinese company in May 2013 to take the resort operator private at €17 a share, later sweetening that to €17.50. The latest offer is 34 percent above the initial offering price, vindicating the holdout investors who had protested that management was substantially undervaluing the company.
Mr. Giscard d’Estaing said he continued to strongly support Fosun’s bid, praising the company’s “long-term perspective.”
By contrast, he described Mr. Bonomi’s bid with K.K.R. as “a purely financial offer,” one for which “a return can be achieved only through massive cost-cutting, including jobs, and massive selling of assets.” Lacking support in China and Latin America, he added, “they would need to dismantle Club Med in order to justify such a high price.”
Mr. Giscard d’Estaing also defended the initial offer price, noting that much had changed over the last year and a half. The €17 a share offer was a 32 percent premium to its price at the time, he said, and financing has become easier, even as stock indexes have hit record levels on both sides of the Atlantic, all factors that have increased the value of the company.
The French resort company operates 70 vacation villages in 40 countries around the world, and last year had about 1.2 million visitors. In seeking a deep-pocketed Chinese partner, Club Med has said it was acting from a strategic imperative that it move upmarket and diversify away from Europe and toward growing markets in Asia and elsewhere.
Last week, the company reported a net loss of €9 million for the 2014 fiscal year, the same as a year earlier, as revenue fell 1.9 percent to €1.38 billion. Despite the weak showing, the company noted that Chinese customers, including from Hong Kong, accounted for 10.2 percent of customers, up one and a half percentage points from a year earlier.
The arrival of Mr. Tanure, who is already a partner of Club Med in Brazil and is keen to expand elsewhere in South America, could help Fosun combat Mr. Bonomi’s argument that his rivals had focused their strategy too heavily on Asia. Price, rather than strategy, now seems to be the main difference between the bids.
Mr. Tanure said that in addition to Brazil, where Club Med could consider opening golf resorts in the center of the São Paulo state, both Colombia and Peru, neither of which has any Club Med resorts, “are very attractive.”
Mr. Tanure is an unlikely figure to join the bid because he invests mostly in distressed assets. He has also been embroiled in numerous legal battles in Brazil, occasionally fighting with fellow investors, including one with Discovery Capital Management over control of the embattled oil company HRT.
And he has faced criticism for his handling of two previously influential Brazilian media entities after he took control more than a decade ago. Under his watch, the business daily Gazeta Mercantil was shut down, while Jornal do Brasil ceased its print edition.
Vinod Sreeharsha contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.