MOSCOW (MRC) -- Germany's Linde has for a second time rejected a request for a shareholder vote at its annual general meeting next month on its planned USD65 billion merger with U.S. industrial gases rival Praxair, reported Reuters.
Linde said shareholders would in any case have to decide individually whether to accept a public offer from the new combined holding company, so a vote at the AGM on May 10 would not be appropriate.
"Even if a qualified majority of Linde shareholders would accept the exchange offer, not a single Linde shareholder will be forced to exchange his shares," it said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Linde was responding to a renewed request from German private-investor association DSW, which came on behalf of shareholders Aberdeen Asset Management and BayernInvest.
As MRC wrote before, in early December 2016, Praxair approached the German company with fresh proposals for a merger of equals to create a world market leader valued at over USD60 billion. These proposals address several concerns that led Linde to call off earlier merger discussions in September 2016, principally the location of the merged group headquarters, management issues and potential job losses in Germany, according to insider reports.
The Linde Group is a world-leading gases and engineering company with around 62,000 employees in more than 100 countries worldwide.
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