Scandlines Bidding War

British bid for £1bn for Baltic ferry operator fails to impress

Travel Insurance News - 23/11/2006

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3i is facing defeat in its attempt to buy the ferry operator Scandlines. Scandlines German owners have refused to sell the business to the British equity house even though the bid far exceeds other bids. Scandlines is 50:50 owned by a German state owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn and the Danish Ministry of Transport. It has been up for sale for almost a year and Morgan Stanley has been advising Deutsche Bahn and NM Rothschild the Danes. The lower offer from the Baltic Ferry Development consortium is around £34million less than the British bid.

The opposition to the British bid is thought to be the possibility of job losses for the 2,000 German workforce even though assurances have been given that this would not be the case for at least 3 years. Scandlines was formed in 1998 by merging two of the largest ferry groups in Germany and Denmark, it operates 26 ferries on 14 routes between Denmark, Germany and Sweden.

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