'Fortune': Germany's Preussag Pays $2.9B for Thomson Travel of Britain
DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Britain's biggest travel company has been taken over by a German rival.</s>DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN ANCHOR: It's an almost $3 billion deal and highlights the transformation that Germany's Preussag has undertaken in recent years. Janet Guyon of "Fortune" magazine joins us now from London. Good morning, Janet, what is the scoop on this deal?</s>JANET GUYON, LONDON BUREAU CHIEF, "FORTUNE": Good morning, how are you? Well, the scoop on this deal is that Preussag has outbid C&N;, which was another German-backed travel company was also interested in Thomson Travel, but over the weekend Preussag got the agreement of the Thomson family to buy this company and the Thomson family has agreed to sell them 22.7 percent of the company and combined with what Preussag had acquired on the market, that gives them over 30 percent of the company, plus the recommendation of management to go ahead with this transaction. And shareholders of Thomson obviously like this deal, the stock is up about 6.1 percent to 172 1/4 pence, which is very close to the offer price of 180 pence. Preussag shares are down slightly to 42.9 euro, but still, it is a pretty big deal for the travel industry here in Europe.</s>MARCHINI: I don't think most Americans have heard of Preussag, but they may have heard of one of its subsidiaries, specifically Thomas Cook. Will it be able to go on owning Thomas Cook?</s>GUYON: Well, no, it won't because of competition issues in the U.K., there are really four big travel companies here in the U.K., and they'll have to dispose of their 50 percent stake in Thomas Cook. Now there's speculation that C&N; might, which lost the bid for Thomson Travel to Preussag, may actually be interested in buying that -- that -- that stake, but we'll have to see what happens. Now, at its press conference this morning, Preussag also said that it would have to sell 49.5 percent of Hapug Lloyd (ph), which is a shipping and cruise ship operation that's run out of Hamburg. So all in all, this continues the transformation of Preussag from what was a steel industrial company, pretty boring stuff, into a travel company. They're trying to latch on to what is one of the faster- growing industries here in Europe.</s>HAFFENREFFER: Janet, a lot of talk this morning about the food stocks, it looks like they're definitely going to be getting a lot more play in today's session, at least here in the U.S., any updates on Nabisco being floated around over there?</s>GUYON: Not on the Nabisco deal, but there is a little bit, we might get a little bit of news today on that Unilever-Bestfoods deal. You know, as you recall, Unilever has an $18.4 billion bid on the table for Bestfoods. Now there is a Goldman Sachs food conference going on today in New York, at which the chairman of Bestfoods and the chairman of Unilever will be speaking. They don't have a formal meeting arranged, but there's speculation out of London that there may be some talk.</s>MARCHINI: All right, terrific. We want to thank you for joining us. Janet Guyon, of "Fortune" magazine, live from London.