The champagne bottles may pop in Amsterdam: TomTom get the green light for their takeover offer of Tele Atlas. After the Tele Atlas shareholders selling deadline passed by at the end of last month, it became clear that TomTom owned 97.48% of all the Tele Atlas shares. This greatly surpassed the target of 80% TomTom had set for itself.So TomTom will honour its promise and pay a takeover offer of ¤ 30 per share. The remaining Tele Atlas shareholders will get another chance to offer their shares until the 26th June. On the 10th of June 2008 the formal part of the takeover takes place. Soon after this date, the Tele Atlas stock listing will disappear from the Amsterdam and Frankfurt stock exchange.
Management
Now the takeover is finally complete, the switching of Chairs in both the TomTom and Tele Atlas management can take place. One of the most noteworthy changes is the departure of founder Alain De Taeye from the Tele Atlas board. He will now be sitting on TomTom's board of chairmen and will target his efforts towards the strategy and company development of the combined organisation.“Now Alain is strengthening the TomTom team, we have two founding fathers of the navigational industry in our board”, says Karel Vuursteen, Chairman at TomTom. “His enormous amount of knowledge and expertise will be a big asset to the group”.
The seat of the Tele Atlas CEO will be taken by Bill Henry. These men have more than 20 years of combined experience in management functions with ICT companies like CSC, PeopleSoft and iSOFT.Departure
Another important change at TomTom is the departure of Alexander Ribbink (see photo). He resigns as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and member of the board at TomTom at his own request and will continue his career outside of the company. Ribbink was a member of the TomTom staff since 2003 and responsible for customer service, marketing, company communication (PR), content & services and TomTom facilities.Harold Goddijn, TomTom CEO, responds sadly at the departure of Ribbink: “Alexander was part of TomTom during very exciting times. In that time, we’ve grown to a worldwide leading company on the PND market. I want to thank Alexander for his valuable contribution to this success.”
Ribbink will remain as Tele Atlas commissioner, a role which was appointed to him (and other TomTom board members like Harold Goddijn and Marina Wyatt) last December. It’s still unknown who will fill the position of TomTom COO once Ribbink leaves.
President
George Fink, president and COO of Tele Atlas also resigns from his function. Fink stood at the base of the worldwide expansion of the company, for example the expansion in Asia. He also managed to position the Tele Atlas products in such a way, that the company gained a solid position in the navigational market.It’s still unclear who will fill in the position of George Fink at Tele Atlas.
TomTom has also announced that Ben van de Veer has been pushed forward as a new Company Commissioner. Van der Veer is currently chairman of the EMEA region of the accountancy company KPMG, member of the UNICEF board of commissioners and member of the VNO-NCW management on behalf of the accountancy branch.
