French dairy giant Groupe Danone and the controlling shareholders of Russian juice and dairy group Wimm-Bill-Dann have said that they have amicably terminated their merger discussions.
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The two companies have been in negotiations since June, when WBD announced that key shareholders were in talks to sell all or a majority of shares to Danone.
Although neither party revealed details on why the talks had broken down, a Danone spokeswoman said, “It’s just that we couldn’t come to an agreement,” reported Dow Jones News.
“It wasn’t only the price that they couldn’t agree on, there were also disagreements over the future strategy of the company, the future of the juice business and the involvement of management in the business,” a person close to the talks told Dow Jones Newswires.
Danone, which owns a 7% stake in WBD, said it did not plan to reduce its holding in the company. WBD meanwhile said it did not have immediate plans for similar talks with any other company.
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By GlobalData“Currently we are not in talks with any other company on a similar deal [to sell the controlling stake or all of the company] and we don’t have that in the short-term plans,” Kira Kiriukhina, a spokeswoman for WBD, was quoted as saying.
