One year on from calling off their planned merger, the Danish meat companies, Danish Crown and Tican, are set to go to arbitration over a claim by Tican that it is due compensation following the cancellation of the merger.
The claim is for the equivalent of just over £2.4 million, with Danish Crown stating that it is approaching arbitration with “serenity”.
“We have had good dialogue with Tican since we had to abandon the merger,” said Danish Crown CFO, Preben Sunke. “Unfortunately it has not yet been possible to find an amicable solution, and now Tican has chosen to let an arbitrator decide the case.”
Danish Crown also reported that the disagreement is about whether the operation was cancelled because of the time limit for approval of the merger, or whether Danish Crown abandoned the merger because of issues linked to achieving competition authority approval.
“In our view there is no doubt that the merger fell because we could not reach a finish point before the agreed deadline,” said
Tican is now part of the German food group, Tönnies, having completed that move just four months after the merger with Danish Crown collapsed.