AMSTERDAM: Takeover talks between Belgium’s postal company Bpost and Dutch delivery company PostNL broke down over the weekend, after becoming public on Friday.
Bpost had made what was described as a ‘friendly offer’ for all the shares in PostNL but the two companies said in a short statement that they had failed to reach a deal on the terms. Neither company has commented further.
The Belgian government owns a majority of the shares in Bpost. Trading in both firms was halted on Friday after Belgian paper De Tijd said Bpost made its first offer for PostNL in March and had raised the bid twice since then. Bpost is currently valued at around €4.8bn, or almost three times that of PostNL. PostNL booked turnover of almost €3.5bn last year and has operations in 13 countries worldwide. Bpost booked turnover of €2.4bn in 2015.
