German engineering conglomerate Linde unveiled plans on Monday to buy British industrial gas group BOC in an 8.2-billion-pound deal that will make it the world's biggest industrial gas maker ahead of French giant Air Liquide.
Linde said in a statement it was offering to buy BOC for 16 pounds per share or 8.2 billion pounds (11.9 billion euros, 14.4 billion dollars) in all, making it the biggest transaction in its 127-history and the biggest foreign take-over by a German company in the past four years.
Linde said it would finance the deal via a combination of new shares, bank loans and proceeds from divestments.
The group indicated that its materials handling division, which includes the group's fork-lift trucks business, could be among the operations set for disposal. Linde is a world leader in fork-lift trucks and employs a workforce of close to 18,000 in the business. The 8.2-billion-pound price tag for BOC represented a 40-percent premium over the average closing price of shares in the company in the three months before January 23, when Linde made its first offer, the German company said.
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