KKCG Maritime’s partial tender offer for Ferretti has drawn a response from shareholders that can only be described as negligible. According to acceptance-level notices filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, cumulative valid acceptances stand at 2,000 shares, representing 0.003836 per cent of the 52,132,861 shares sought. The offer has effectively flatlined just eight trading days into a window that runs until 13 April.

The figures come directly from mandatory daily disclosure notices published by KKCG. Against a maximum consideration of around €182.5 million, the offer has so far attracted acceptances of just €7,000.

The figures are not entirely surprising. When Ferretti’s board formally recommended rejection earlier this month, citing independent financial adviser Altus Capital, that the €3.50 price was “neither fair nor reasonable,” it handed shareholders a clear steer. With Ferretti’s shares trading above €3.50 on both Euronext Milan and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in recent weeks, the open market has been granting a better exit than KKCG. For most independent shareholders, the path of least resistance has been to do nothing.

The pen-dropping silence comes after a puffed chest response to the board’s recommendation. On 17 March, the day the acceptance period opened, KKCG filed a formal rebuttal that reframes the entire situation as a question about who is actually running Ferretti and in whose interests.

The impartiality argument is the sharpest instrument in KKCG’s filing. Of the six directors who voted to recommend rejection at the board level, four were non-independent nominees of Ferretti International Holding (FIH), Weichai’s wholly-owned subsidiary, who publicly declared their opposition to the offer in January. Of the five directors who gave a recommendation as members of the Independent Board Committee, three were FIH nominees.

KKCG’s rejection reflects “the stated opposition of the offer by FIH rather than an independent assessment of the offer from the perspective of all shareholders.” Three directors abstained: CEO Alberto Galassi, non-executive director Piero Ferrari, and independent non-executive director Stefano Domenicali. The filing notes them separately.

On valuation, the peer group Altus used to reach its conclusions is a major concern for Czech investors, who argue it benchmarked Ferretti against companies whose business models, scale, and geographical focus differ materially. This included a builder of cruise ships and defence vessels whose valuation reflects current elevated investor interest in the defence sector. It maintains that the €3.50 price, representing a 21.3 per cent premium to Ferretti’s undisturbed December 2025 levels (about €2.89), remains the more meaningful reference point. Even Altus acknowledged the consideration was “competitively priced when measured against historical trading price trends.”

The share price argument probably cuts deepest, though. The board’s foremost case for rejection rested on the fact that Ferretti’s shares have been trading above €3.50. KKCG argues that the elevated price is not based on any genuine market consensus on Ferretti’s value, but instead on Weichai’s own purchasing. FIH, it says, has been purchasing Ferretti shares continuously from 12 December 2025 through to 16 March 2026, comprising, on average, 24 per cent of total trading volume on the days it was active and 15 per cent of total trading volume across the period as a whole. Strip that out, KKCG argues, and the price would likely fall back toward the €2.89 level at which shares were trading before any of this began.

Should that activity then decline once the offer closes, KKCG warns, “there seems a real risk that the share price may drop back to the levels seen before the Undisturbed Date." In a cunning move, it also quotes the Independent Board Committee’s own language back at shareholders that even the IBC acknowledged they “should carefully consider personal investment objectives, and the potential trade-off between short-term investment gains for long-term potentials of the Company.”

Ferretti’s annual general meeting is now confirmed for 14 May 2026, where the real endgame of this episode will play out in the board slate contest, though neither KKCG nor FIH has yet named its candidates. With the acceptance period running to 13 April and Ferretti’s full-year 2025 results due to be reviewed by the board on 31 March, the coming weeks will add further material to a picture that shareholders will need to weigh before the meeting.

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