Princess rejects new Carnival offer

CRUISE line P&O Princess said it has rejected the latest hostile takeover bid of £3.8bn from rival Carnival. But it also said that the offer has now reached a realistic level for shareholders who wanted to sell out of the company and the industry.

The board is recommending at the egm on February 14 that its shareholders vote against any proposal to adjourn the meeting and is backing a merger with Royal Caribbean Cruises.

Shareholders who own well over 20% of Princess have pledged to vote to postpone next week's ballot on merging the British group with Royal Caribbean, allowing time to consider Carnival's latest offer.

Carnival said on Thursday that its new all-share deal would stand only if shareholders with 15% made such a written assurance by 1pm today. Major institutions said they had spoken to each other and enough had agreed to force a postponement.

Princess advertised in today's newspapers reminding proxy voters they have three days to post their forms. To force a postponement of the vote, shareholders with more than 50% must call for it at the meeting.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in