Gas groups Linde, Praxair halt merger plans

German industrial gas supplier Linde and US competitor Praxair said Monday they had abandoned plans for a merger that would have created the world's biggest firm in the sector.

"Shareholder representatives in the supervisory board of Linde AG recommend... to terminate the preliminary talks with Praxair, Inc. about a potential merger," the company said in a statement.

Chief executive Wolfgang Buechele and the rest of the supervisory board agreed with the decision, the statement said.

"While the strategic rationale of a merger has been principally confirmed, discussions about details, specifically about governance aspects, did not result in a mutual understanding," it added.

Praxair confirmed the halt to the talks in a one-line statement of its own.

Shares in Linde took a tumble as the Frankfurt stock market opened on Monday, losing 7.8 percent, while the DAX index of 30 leading companies fell 2.0 percent by just after 1000 GMT.

The statements by the two companies came just one month after they were forced to confirm they were in merger talks following leaks in the press.

Major stumbling blocks in the talks included the questions of where the merged group should be based and how management should be structured, a person familiar with the discussions told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Where Linde hoped to maintain its decentralised structure and for the merged group to have dual headquarters -- including its traditional home in Munich -- Praxair insisted on central management and a US base, the person said.

The end to the talks is likely final for the foreseeable future, they added.

- Market in consolidation -

A merger between Linde and Praxair could have allowed the German firm to overtake historic French rival Air Liquide as the world's biggest industrial gas supplier, with estimated annual revenues of more than $30 billion.

Air Liquide inked a deal to take over US-based Airgas in May, boosting its revenues to more than 20 billion euros ($22.4 billion) a year and overtaking Linde's 18 billion turnover.

But a Linde-Praxair tie-up would also have been subject to close regulatory scrutiny, as the number of large players in the market would have shrunk to three.

"There is no need for a merger at this scale in our view," analyst Peter Spengler of DZ bank said.

"We were not convinced that the merger would be beneficial for Linde shareholders."

At the time the merger talks were announced in August, analysts and markets welcomed the move, with both Linde and Praxair shares soaring.

A series of mergers has left only a handful of major players in the global industrial gases market, supplying products for use in medicine and in industrial processes in the chemical, electronic, agri-food, and energy industries.

Linde has suffered from weak orders for its turnkey industrial facilities, mostly sold to oil and natural gas companies, as oil prices have weathered punishing lows in recent years.

Gas sales, Linde's largest source of revenue, have remained more stable.

Praxair is around half the size of Linde, with revenues of around 10 billion euros a year.

Linde employs 64,000 people worldwide, while Connecticut-based Praxair has 26,000 staff.