The food delivery service Just Eat Takeaway has agreed a deal worth £5.8 billion ($7.3 billion) to acquire the US-based company Grubhub.
Takeover talks were recently reported to have been taking place between Grubhub and Uber, the ride-hailing app company, but Just Eat Takeaway has now managed to tie up an all-stock acquisition agreement.
Once completed the deal will establish Just Eat Takeaway as the largest food delivery service business in the world outside of China.
Just Eat Takeaway, which is based in the Netherlands, principally operates in Europe but its deal to buy Grubhub will open up the very lucrative US market and bring the total number of territories in which it operates to 25.
Shareholders of both Just Eat Takeaway and Grubhub have yet to approve the deal that’s due to be put before them but expectations are that a new trans-Atlantic food delivery giant is soon to be created.
Collectively, the two companies processed close to 600 million food delivery orders over the course of 2019, with more than 70 million people worldwide regarded as being active users of the two services.
The food delivery industry has been boosted notably by the coronavirus pandemic with many millions of people globally having suddenly been prevented from eating out at restaurants or at their favourite fast food outlets.
Just Eat Takeaway was only recently created in its current guise following a merger deal between Just Eat and Takeaway.com, which was worth around £6 billion and only officially approved by regulators in April.
The potential deal that might have seen Uber integrating Grubhub into its Uber Eats operation is reported to have been scuppered in part by the prospect of extra regulator attention in the US, with Uber Eats and Grubhub representing two of the three biggest players in the American food delivery market.
Expectations are now that the deal to combine Just Eat Takeaway and Grubhub will be done by early 2021, with Grubhub’s current chief executive Matt Maloney set to join Just Eat Takeaway’s management board and lead the combined business across North America.
