BRUSSELS: Trading in Dutch postal company PostNL and Belgium’s Bpost was halted on Friday following reports the Belgian company had made a bid for its Dutch peer.
According to Belgian paper De Tijd, Bpost made its first offer for PostNL in March and has raised the bid twice since then. That offer is now being studied by PostNL’s board, the paper said. Although presented as a merger of equals, Bpost is currently valued at around €4.8bn, or almost three times PostNL. Bpost is majority owned by the Belgian state.
PostNL booked turnover of almost €3.5bn last year and has operations in 13 countries worldwide. Bpost booked turnover of €2.4bn in 2015.
