By Scott Wright
BUS giant National Express has asserted its view that its proposed merger with Stagecoach represents “superior value creation opportunity” compared with bid tabled for the Scottish company by DWS, the German infrastructure specialist.
National Express and Stagecoach agreed terms on an all-share merger worth £1.9 billion in December last year. However, the deal then looked to have been scuppered when the Stagecoach board accepted a cash offer from DWS that valued the Perth-based transport company at £565 million.
National Express responded in March when it declared that the DWS offer “materially undervalues” Stagecoach.
In a first-quarter trading update yesterday, which revealed that revenue in the first three months of the year had been restored to 2019 levels, National Express said: “We continue to believe that our proposed combination with Stagecoach, with at least £45 million of run-rate synergies, represents a superior value creation opportunity to the DWS offer. However, we will remain disciplined in the assessment of our options going forward.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel