Christian Salvesen Plc (Acquired by Norbert Dentressangle 2007)

Note: This company is no longer trading as a separate enterprise.

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2007

October 2nd

Norbert Dentressangle has significantly reinforced its position in Europe as a transport and logistics provider with the recommended offer for the acquisition of UK based Christian Salvesen.

French based Norbert Dentressangle has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire European logistics company Christian Salvesen at a price of 92 pence in cash for each share, valuing Christian Salvesen at approximately £254.4m (€365.1m).

The terms of the transaction represent a premium of 78.6% to the closing price of 51.5 pence for each Christian Salvesen share on 24 September 2007, which was the last business day prior to the announcement by Christian Salvesen that it had received approaches from potential offerors, and a premium of 58.0% to the average closing price of 58.2 pence for each Christian Salvesen share for the three-month period prior to 24 September 2007.

The deal will be financed through existing cash resources and senior credit facilities being made available by Société Générale of €225m.

Norbert Dentressangle has received undertakings to vote in favour of the transaction from the Christian Salvesen Directors, members of the Salvesen family and other shareholders (representing approximately 23%. of the share capital of Christian Salvesen).

Norbert Dentressangle Group believes that this strategic transaction will enable the enlarged group to offer significant operational benefits and will facilitate growth of the business within Europe. It will result in the creation of a European transport and logistics leader, with c. €2.9bn of combined turnover in 2006 and 29,200 employees. More analysis of the acquisition will follow. 

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Christian Salvesen is a UK-based third party logistics provider with operations throughout Europe. The company employs 14,000 staff at 200 sites, in eight countries and had revenues of £899m in 2006.

In 2005 the business was restructured following the arrival of the new CEO Stewart Oades into two main business segments of  "Food and Consumer" and "Transport".

• The Food and Consumer businesses provides outsourced supply chain operations for the food and consumer sectors, for both manufacturers and retailers. They offer both dedicated and shared-user solutions across Europe, including temperature controlled storage and distribution.
• The Transport businesses provide transport and warehousing for a wide range of industrial sector customers.  It operates shared-user networks in the UK, Iberia and France, and also operates dedicated warehousing and transport fleets for customers' exclusive use. They are expert in the transportation of hazardous loads. 

Countries of operation comprise Belgium, France, Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom where they manages 400,000 sq m of warehousing space and own over 1,000 tractor units and 3,000 trailers.

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History

The company started life in 1846, established by two Norwegian brothers and a Scottish merchant. It has had a variety of different interests over the years including whaling, shipping, house building and off shore oil. In the 1970s, Christian Salvesen began to focus on its food processing business and at the same time it developed distribution operations.