The European Commission has approved DSV’s planned takeover of DB Schenker following the acquisition announcement last year.
Danish forwarder DSV confirmed that it had signed a deal to take over German logistics giant DB Schenker from Deutsche Bahn last September. The €14.3bn purchase deal will create the world's largest freight forwarder.
The competition cases section of the European Commission's website shows that the provisional deadline was 8 April and that the latest decision was also made on 8 April.
Deutsche Bahn announced that DB Schenker was officially up for sale in December 2023 after spending a year mulling its options.
Following the sale announcement in September 2024, the supervisory board of Deutsche Bahn approved the sale of DB Schenker to DSV in October 2024.
But DSV's acquisition of DB Schenker has not been a simple process. As well as approvals from Deutsche Bahn's board and the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport, DSV has had to obtain approval from a large number of authorities.
Now the EU has cleared the takeover, DSV is awaiting a decision by the US Department of Justice.
The deal also faced union opposition and a reported attempt by rival bidder CVC to persuade Deutsche Bahn to change its mind with an increased bid for DB Schenker.
DSV said in February that it expected to close its acquisition of DB Schenker in the second quarter of 2025.
The forwarder registered a 9% year-on-year increase in air cargo revenues to Dkk55.2bn last year, while gross profits were down 10.9% to Dkk11.9bn and air volumes improved by 7.1% to 1.4m tonnes.
DSV said that it expected the acquisition, which is larger than all its previous deals combined, to further strengthen its airfreight business.
"The Air & Sea division will be significantly strengthened and will after the integration move more than 4m TEU of sea freight and around 2.5m tonnes of airfreight every year," said the company.
