The second-biggest German travel company, C&N Touristic is to buy all of Thomas Cook of Britain to become the second-biggest European travel company after its rival Preussag. The deal was valued at 885 million euros.
C&N is to acquire a 22% holding in Thomas Cook owned by US company Carlson, and an option to buy the other 78% owned by Preussag and a regional state-owned bank, WestLb.
Preussag AG and WestLB, which own 33% of Preussag, had been ordered in July by the EU Commission to sell their interests in Thomas Cook after they had bought another British travel company, Thomson Travel.
Once the deal is completed, C&N would have annual sales of 15 7.67 billion euros and nearly 15 million customers, the company said. Last year it had sales of 4.65 billion euros. Preussag and C+N are rivals on the German and European travel markets and are fighting hard for market share.
C&N had tried and failed to gain control of Thomson Travel, being beaten by Preussag, and is trying to expand outside Germany where it still makes three quarters of its sales.
C+N has 11,000 employees. The retail group KarstadtQuelle and the airline Lufthansa each own half of it. Thomas Cook operates 700 travel agencies and 28 aircraft in Britain and employs about 20,000 people throughout the world. It is one of the oldest names in the travel business.
