I have had a look through Bollore's ownership chain and have a rough calculation of the shareholders true ownership.
The way I see it, if you follow the ownership structure starting at bollore and working up, there are sporadic claims by true shareholders of the parent companies at perhaps 3 points on the chain with everything else going to the subs. I see the following:
1) Public shareholders of Bollore own 35.7% of Bollore.
2) Public shareholders of Odet own 5.9% of Bollore. I calculate this starting with the public shareholders of Odet ow 9.2% of Odet, Odet owns 63.8% of Bollore. If you multiply the 2 fractions you get 5.9% of Bollore owned by Odet.
3) Bollore Participations shareholders own 4.55%. There are a series of parent of Odet, ultimately it is owned by Bollore Participations. I assume that BP is 100% owned by the family but it doesn't really matter. If you follow the fractions of ownership you end with the Bollore Participations shareholders or the parent if there is another parent, this entity owns 4.55% of Bollore.
4) The remainder is owned by subsidiaries, this amounts to 53.8%.
However, the subsidiaries are then ultimately owned by Bollore itself.
I think there might be a small amount of leakage in the subs due to small fractions being owned outside the group but I can't verify the exact number. It looks like it would be small, 2 or 3% might leak out. The majority of that 53.8% goes back to Bollore and gets redistributed out. However the redistribution just goes along the same ratios as the first round.
If you work it out and follow the ownership chains, it appears that in the end the ownership works across the original bollore/odet/BP ownership ratios.
So:
1) Bollore public shareholders owns 35.7% / (35.7 + 5.9 + 4.55) : 77% of Bollore.
2) Odet public shareholders owns 5.9 / (35.7 + 5.9 + 4.55) : 12.7% of Bollore.
3) BP owns 4.55 / (35.7 + 5.9 + 4.55) : 9.9% of Bollore.
The numbers above are probably a bit overstated as I didn't take into account leakage from the subs. Still each of these entities should own more than double what is attributed.
It appears that BOL publicly listed shares have bvps $7.5-$8 vs a bvps of roughly $3.50 using simple book value divided by shares outstanding. So it is roughly a 50 cent or maybe even 45 cent dollar.
Anyone see any holes in this?