Reuters — The U.S. rail regulator on Tuesday rejected a voting trust structure that would have allowed Canadian National Railway (CN) to proceed with its US$29 billion proposed acquisition of U.S. peer Kansas City Southern.
The decision was a blow to the deal that would create the first direct railway linking Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
The voting trust would temporarily own Kansas City Southern without CN exerting control. It would have allowed KCS shareholders to receive and keep the $325 per share in cash and stock CN was offering, even if the combination was subsequently rejected by the regulator, the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (all figures US$ except where noted).
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The STB said it left the door open for the companies to seek full review of their proposed merger. Regulatory experts said the process would be uncertain and could last more than a year. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on their next steps.
KCS has an alternative suitor, Canadian Pacific Railway (CP), whose $25 billion deal to buy the company in March was later trumped later by CN.
Canadian Pacific’s proposed voting trust was approved in May, and this month the company presented a new $27 billion cash-and-stock bid for Kansas City Southern, confident the STB would reject CN’s voting trust.
CP did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but CP CEO Keith Creel said in a release that the company’s Aug. 10 offer to KCS “still stands.”
The STB’s ruling, Creel said, “clearly shows that the CN-KCS merger proposal is illusory and not achievable” and “knowing this, we believe (CP’s offer) recognizes the premium value of KCS while providing regulatory certainty (and) ought to be deemed a superior proposal.”
KCS shares closed on Tuesday down 4.39 per cent at $280.67. CN shares closed up 7.36 per cent at $148.40, indicating relief from shareholders that the acquisition now looks unlikely. CP shares dropped 4.55 per cent to C$86.69, highlighting trepidation among its shareholders over paying up for a deal with KCS.
After the STB decision, a CN shareholder, hedge fund TCI Management, sent a letter to the company’s board urging it to cancel its deal with KCS and replace CEO Jean-Jacques Ruest with Jim Vena, a veteran of both CN and Union Pacific. Vena could not be immediately reached for comment.
“The board must take responsibility for the company’s recent underperformance and failure,” TCI said in the letter. The fund, run by hedge fund veteran Chris Hohn, has a 5.2 per cent stake in CN and is also CP’s largest shareholder.
The STB said that even though the overlap of CN’s and KCS’s networks was confined to about 113 km between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the two railways operated parallel lines in the central portion of the U.S. and could be under less pressure to compete if the voting trust was approved.
“The board finds that applicants have not demonstrated that their use of a voting trust would be consistent with the public interest,” the STB said in a statement.
U.S. President Joe Biden has issued sweeping executive orders aimed at promoting competition in the U.S. economy. One order encouraged the STB to consider Amtrak’s statutory rights when assessing whether a rail merger is in the public interest.
Passenger railroad Amtrak, majority owned by the U.S. government, had opposed CN’s voting trust, saying its pledge to divest the Baton Rouge to New Orleans line will harm future passenger service in Louisiana.
— Reporting for Reuters by Shreyasee Raj and Abhijith Ganapavaram in Bangalore and Greg Roumeliotis in New York. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.
