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Takeover bid sees Ticket trading halted

Trading in shares of the Ticket travel company was halted on the Stockholm stock exchange on Tuesday morning after the company’s stock price shot up 22 percent on rumours of a takeover bid by the firm's primary owner.

Published: 5 January 2010 14:14 CET

“I can’t give any comments on this at the present time,” said Ticket CFO Thomas Ådén to the TT news agency shortly after trading stopped at 10.30 on Tuesday morning.

“We’ll get back to you; we currently have no more information.”

Later on Tuesday, Norwegian businessman Per G. Braathen, whose Braganza investment firm has been Ticket’s primary owner since May 2009, confirmed he wanted to buy up all of Ticket’s publicly traded shares.

In order to entice shareholders to give up their shares in Ticket, Braathen said he would offer them a cash offer of 7 kronor ($0.97) per share, a roughly 21 percent premium over Tickets Monday closing share price.

The offer values the loss-making travel company at 235 million kronor.

Braganza became Ticket’s largest shareholder when it purchased shares from the bankrupt Icelandic company Fons.

On Tuesday morning, Braganza snapped up an additional 535,000 Ticket shares, bringing its ownership stake up to 32 percent, the ownership threshold which, according to exchange rules, requires an investor to make an offer to buy up a company’s remaining shares.

Braganza owns several other companies in the travel and tourism industry, including Malmö Aviation, and thus sees itself as possessing “vast industry knowledge about Ticket’s prerequisites and needs”, according to a statement.

The Norwegian investment firm added that it has the financial resources necessary to support Ticket in the long term and that it believes the company can thrive under private ownership.

“In private ownership, management will be given the ability to devote their time to operational activities,” according to Braganza’s statement, noting as well that a delisting of Ticket would allow the company to save the costs associated with remaining on the exchange.

While Braganza intends to help return Ticket to profitability, it said it has “no plans which will result in any significant consequences or effects” for Ticket employees, according to the statement.

Following the stop in trading, officials with the Stockholm stock exchange now plan to investigate whether information about the deal leaked, of if Ticket shares were driven up simply by the huge number of shares purchased by Braganza.

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

Published: 26 March 2024 09:55 CET
German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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