Garmin Ltd., has made an unsolicited $3.3 billion bid for mapmaker Tele Atlas NV, a move that tops an offer from rival TomTom by about 15 percent. Garmin plans to formalize the bid before Dec. 4, the expiry date of TomTom's bid for Tele Atlas.
"A combined company will allow Tele Atlas’ employees and customers to leverage Garmin’s large worldwide user base and industry leading technology to further contribute to the creation of superior mapping coverage, quality and shared content for all of Tele Atlas’ current and future customers," Garmin said in a statement.
“Given the high growth and rapid change the navigation market has undergone to date, we feel that now is the right time for Garmin to move ahead with this proposed combination with Tele Atlas," says Garmin CEO Dr. Min Kao. "Together, we believe that we can create the best available mapping solutions for our customers around the world. We also intend to make Tele Atlas' content available to the entire navigation market on a non-discriminatory basis, promoting healthy competition, with significant benefits to the navigation market and all its consumers.”
Garmin says that its intention that Tele Atlas, following the closure of the acquisition, will continue its business as a separate entity, based and headquartered in the Netherlands, and retain the existing management.
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