TUI, Carnival pull plug on cruise joint venture
An AFP report says that TUI, Europe’s leading travel and tourism group has decided to abandon plans for a joint venture in cruise ships with British group Carnival.
“TUI and Carnival have announced that they will withdraw their anti-trust filing with the relevant authorities for a joint venture to develop a new cruise brand,” the German company said in a statement.
The reason for the withdrawal was “the extremely difficult environment with regards to competitive law making it impossible to close the transaction in Carnival’s current business year,” TUI explained.
“Failure to do so would create adverse tax consequences for the companies and would have a severe impact on the economies of the transaction. TUI and Carnival have, therefore, decided not to implement the joint venture in the proposed form.”
TUI, which is currently active in the luxury cruise market, had said last December that it planned to move into the high-volume cruise segment by taking a 25-percent stake in a joint venture with world leader Carnival.
Under the terms of the proposed partnership, the two companies planned to launch a new TUI Cruises brand, with the first TUI Cruises 3,000-bed ship to be delivered in 2010.
For its part, Carnival was to have brought its German AIDA operations into the joint venture.
TUI said on Wednesday that it would stick to its plans to expand its own cruise activities.
“This will now happen mainly within the framework of Hapag-Lloyd Cruises,” the statement said.
Hapag-Lloyd Cruises operates four cruise liners and is one of the leading operators of premium and luxury cruises in the German speaking market.
Report by The Mole
John Alwyn-Jones
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