P&O and Royal Nedlloyd N.V. ("Nedlloyd") announced that agreement has been reached for Nedlloyd to acquire P&O's 50% interest in P&O Nedlloyd Container Line Limited ("PONL"). Nedlloyd will be renamed Royal P&O Nedlloyd N.V. ("Royal P&O Nedlloyd") upon completion of the transaction.

As consideration, P&O will receive approximately EUR 215 million cash and a 25% interest in the new company Royal P&O Nedlloyd.

The new corporate structure will give PONL independence and therefore increased flexibility to grow and develop its position as one of the leading global container shipping companies.

The transaction is subject to approval by Nedlloyd's and P&O's shareholders, regulatory approvals and other tramits.

The status of PONL will effectively be transformed from a joint venture to an independent listing, with its headquarters in Rotterdam.

The management team - led by recently appointed CEO Philip Green - will be able to focus on positioning the company to capitalise on the current upswing in the container shipping industry cycle.

PONL will continue to operate using its existing trade name 'P&O Nedlloyd'.The transaction will have no impact on PONL's business, its employees or its day-to-day operations and services provided to its customers.

Lord Sterling, Chairman of P&O said: "This transaction achieves P&O's key strategic objective and is good news for our stockholders. It is also good news for P&O Nedlloyd which will be able to use its new independence to reinforce its position as one of the world's leading container shipping companies."

Haddo Meijer, Chief Executive Officer of Nedlloyd said: "This is an exciting development for Nedlloyd and its shareholders as through this one-step transformation we will be able to meet the objective of effectively creating an independent listing for P&O Nedlloyd and we strongly recommend to our shareholders to support this transaction."

The P&O Group announced this represents a further but fundamental step in transforming into a company focused primarily on a rapidly growing international Ports business.

Regarding trade between NWC and East Coast of South America, market rumours speaks about in a near future P&O Nedlloyd's standalone service in the N. Europe-East Coast South America trade named "Lambada" operated with six vessels could stop it's independant operations, and the Company should be negotiating to continuous in the trade through one of the two joint services in this trade: the VSA4 - leading by CSAV or the Hamburg Süd group.