NEW YORK (dpa) – A battle raging since last November among the world’s three largest cruise shipping companies over who will rule the ocean travel waves is more open than ever before.
Shareholders of the British company P&O Princess Cruises PLC have agreed to postpone an extraordinary general meeting at which a merger with American counterpart Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. was to have been approved.The deal between Royal Caribbean, the second biggest cruise company in the world, and third-biggest P&O would have been worth some 3.46 billion dollars, according to industry experts.P&O shareholders made their decision at the behest of the number-one cruise shipping line, Carnival Corporation, also a U.S. company. Last December Carnival launched a hostile takeover bid for P&O Princess. Since then the ante has been raised several times and now has reached 5.4 billion dollars.The three companies control about 60 per cent of the global cruise travel market. The battle over P&O is taking place at a time of a severe downturn in passenger numbers in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks.Cartel authorities in Brussels and Washington should first study both potential merger/acquisition offers, Carnival said in urging P&O shareholders to delay a decision on merging with Royal Caribbean.That appeal came after P&O management had rejected the most recent Carnival bid on grounds that it believed the deal would never be approved by anti-trust authorities.P&O’s argument is that it would make no difference whether the P&O merger with Royal Caribbean would be torpedoed or whether Carnival’s takeover of P&O would go through – in either case, Carnival would maintain its position as the world’s largest cruise ship operator.After the P&O postponement decision, Royal Caribbean also postponed its own extraordinary general meeting in Miami. Royal Caribbean boss Richard Fain said his company now wants to meet with consultants about what to do next. But industry insiders do not believe that Royal Caribbean will pull back from its merger aims.Should P&O (2.45 billion dollars turnover in the last business year) and Royal Caribbean (3.15 billion dollars) do eventually merge, then the world’s largest cruise shipping line would be the result, a company with 5.6 billion dollars turnover and 520 million dollars profits.It would count more than three million passengers a year and a fleet of 41 ships capable of carrying 75,000 passengers in combining the operations of the Royal Caribbean, Princess, Celebrity, P&O Cruises, Swan Hellenic, AIDA and A’Rosa shipping lines.A merger would also drop Miami-based Carnival to second place in the market, with its turnover last year of 4.54 billion dollars and earnings of 926 million dollars. The company has 43 ships and includes the Carnival Cruise, Holland America, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Seabourn and Windstar lines.Should Carnival win the battle for P&O after all, then the company under chief executive Micky Arison would expand its leading market position even further.
