PostNL rejects bpost bid

The Boards of PostNL have rejected bpost’s take-over offer. In a statement sent to Post&Parcel this morning (11 November) PostNL said that the proposed offer “does not represent a sufficiently compelling value proposition for PostNL’s shareholders” and the Boards “remain confident about PostNL’s stand-alone strategy”.

The PostNL Boards also made the point that the “combined entity that would be created following completion of the proposal would de-facto still be controlled by the Belgian State”. PostNL said that it “strongly believes that the proposed governance structure, composition and practice will make the combined group susceptible to Belgian political differences and not agile to effectively manage the company”.

Focusing on the progress of the stand-alone strategy” PostNL said: “The Q3 2016 results published earlier this week demonstrate the progress achieved to date, highlighted by including PostNL’s reconfirmation of its earlier guidance provided for the years 2016 and 2017.

“The growth trends in Parcels remain very tangible and robust and Parcels continues to outperform the markets and its peers. PostNL continues to transform and innovate its business to benefit from the strong growth in e-commerce. By doing so, PostNL will create significantly more than 1600 new jobs in the Netherlands on a stand-alone basis. Mail in the Netherlands is performing as projected, further demonstrating that PostNL is effectively managing the effects of the declining mail volumes via consistent cost savings. Finally, PostNL’s activities in Germany and Italy are performing in line with their plans and our cross border operations are growing at a double digit rate.”

PostNL added: “Within the next six months, there are several important government decisions due on the Dutch postal market. Consequently, the opinion of the Dutch government, and its views about a possible combination of PostNL with bpost is therefore an important factor for PostNL to consider. In this respect, PostNL have taken into account the public statements of both the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Mr Kamp and the Dutch Prime Minister Mr Rutte, who have both been quoted to express their concern that completion of this combination would effectively put PostNL “back in time”.”