Dubai: British shipping icon P&O's shares traded on the London Stock Exchange for the last time yesterday following the court approval of its acquisition by DP World on Monday.
P&O shares will be formally delisted from the official list in London, the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Australian Stock Exchange tomorrow.
Since P&O shareholders approved the $6.8 billion DP World offer on February 13, the deal has been dogged by controversies, with the worst challenge to the Dubai firm coming from US Congressmen.
The latest irritant for DP World is from India, one of the 19 countries where the company will acquire P&O's business.
The Gujarat Maritime Board, the regulatory agency for ports in the western state of Gujarat, has sent a show-cause notice to P&O Ports India asking why its concession agreement for the Mundra International Container Terminal in the state should not be cancelled after the takeover, according to a report in India's Economic Times newspaper.
Citing sources, the newspaper reported that "P&O Ports has to take prior consent of the central and state government for any equity dilution in the company as well as any transfer of assets and property" to a third party.
Under the terms of its Mundra operations, P&O was told in May 2003 that it had to maintain a minimum of 51 per cent of the paid-up capital of Mundra terminal for a minimum of seven years from the date of acquisition, the newspaper reported. The show-cause notice is a result of the failure of P&O Ports to meet conditions of the original agreement, it said.
P&O and DP World account for over 50 per cent of the container traffic of around four million TEUs in India.
While P&O operates in JNPT, Mumbai, Chennai and Mundra Ports, DP World operates Cochin port, the paper said.
