Maersk declares P&O Nedlloyd takeover bid unconditional

Maersk declares P&O Nedlloyd takeover bid unconditional    A.P. Moller-Maersk Friday declared its public offer for shares of Royal P&O Nedlloyd N.V. “unconditional,” meaning it will buy all shares tendered and become the dominant shareholder of the Dutch shipping group.
   As announced last week, Maersk has secured 95.6 percent of the shares of Royal P&O Nedlloyd, the parent company of P&O Nedlloyd, at the expiry of the takeover bid acceptance period Aug. 4.
   Maersk will now acquire the tendered shares this Thursday against a cash payment of 57 euros ($70.48) per share.
   To obtain the remaining shares in the Dutch company, Maersk will extend its 57-euro-per-share offer through Aug. 23. If there remain independent shareholders after this offer, the Danish group will force them to sell through a “squeeze out” procedure on the Euronext stock exchange.
   With the success of the 2.3-billion-euro ($3 billion) takeover bid of Royal P&O Nedlloyd certain, Maersk said it intends to remove the public listing of the company from the Euronext stock exchange in Amsterdam as soon as possible.
   “The expected date of delisting and the last trading day on Euronext for the shares of Royal P&O Nedlloyd N.V. will be announced through Euronext according to its procedures,” Maersk said in a statement.
   The next task for Maersk will be to mesh P&O Nedlloyd’s large container shipping and logistics operations into Maersk Sealand and Maersk Logistics.
   The Maersk group expects the acquisition of Royal P&O Nedlloyd to add about DKK45 billion ($7.5 billion) a year to its revenue.
   After amortization of the additional value of the acquired assets but before integration costs, it expects “a small, positive effect” on the A.P. Moller-Maersk group this year. Maersk also predicted the acquisition would have “a positive impact” on its 2006 result, also taking the integration costs into consideration.
   Maersk warned the integration of the Royal P&O Nedlloyd N.V. business with Maersk Sealand will result in “considerable non-recurring costs,” initially estimated to be about DKK3 billion ($500 million). Of this figure, more than half is expected to be included in the result for 2005 and the rest in 2006.
   “The predominant part of the integration of the companies is expected to be finalized before the end of 2006, realizing considerable synergies,” Maersk said.