3 SEP 2026 — Delivery Hero's boards have backed Uber's offer of €41.50 a share, an equity value of about US$14.8bn, with Prosus selling its 17 per cent stake to take Uber's economic interest to roughly 53 per cent. Read the second transaction alongside it. Delivery Hero is selling its businesses in the 14 markets where Uber Eats already operates to SSW Partners for US$1.6bn, which is the competition remedy being offered before anyone demands one.
The terms
Uber is offering cash of €41.50 a share to all Delivery Hero shareholders, with a minimum acceptance threshold of 50 per cent plus one share. Both the supervisory and management boards call the price fair and adequate and point to accelerated product innovation.
Prosus has agreed to sell its 17 per cent holding. Uber was already the largest shareholder, and the combination takes its economic interest to about 53 per cent. Separately, Delivery Hero has agreed to sell its businesses in 14 markets where Uber Eats already operates to the investment firm SSW Partners for US$1.6bn.
The offer document was published after approval by BaFin, Germany's financial regulator, with an acceptance period running from 27 August to 5 November 2026. Closing is expected in the second half of 2027. The combined business would span 99 countries with pro-forma gross merchandise value of US$236bn in 2025.
The carve-out is the interesting document
Selling the overlap before a regulator asks is a deliberate structure, and it tells you what the parties expect the review to focus on. In every one of those 14 markets a merged Uber and Delivery Hero would have gone from two competitors to one.
Divesting the 14 markets removes the direct horizontal overlap from the analysis. Regulators are left reviewing a combination of businesses that mostly do not compete, which is a much easier case to defend, and the sequencing rather than the headline price is what makes the deal plausible.
The US$1.6bn price for 14 country operations is the usual discount for a forced divestiture. The seller needs the sale to close a much larger deal, and the buyer knows it.
The timeline says nobody expects this to be quick
The acceptance period closes on 5 November, and completion is not expected until the second half of 2027. That year-long gap is the competition review.
Food delivery has become a repeat subject for competition authorities across several jurisdictions, and a deal spanning 99 countries touches a large number of them. Each has its own filing thresholds, its own timetable and its own view of what the relevant market is — whether that is food delivery alone, or delivery and mobility together, which is the question Uber's own structure invites.
A year is a long time to hold a business in suspension. Staff leave, product roadmaps stall and competitors recruit against the uncertainty, and that cost falls on Delivery Hero regardless of whether the deal completes.
Fifty-three per cent is not the same as control
Prosus selling takes Uber's economic interest to about 53 per cent, and the offer proceeds at 50 per cent plus one share. Those numbers describe a majority stake rather than the clean acquisition the coverage implies.
German takeover law and Delivery Hero's own governance sit between a majority holding and the ability to run the company as a division. Running Delivery Hero as a division and consolidating it fully requires a domination agreement under German law. That agreement needs a higher shareholder threshold and triggers compensation payments to remaining minority holders.
So the practical outcome at completion may be a majority-owned listed subsidiary with minority shareholders whose interests have to be respected, rather than an integrated business. That structure constrains the very synergies an acquirer of this size is usually buying, which is why the acceptance rate in November matters beyond clearing the threshold.
Southeast Asia already had this argument
The regional angle is that the consolidation this deal represents has largely happened here already. Grab acquired foodpanda's Southeast Asian business, DoorDash bought Deliveroo in 2025, and what remains of Delivery Hero's foodpanda operation in the region is Taiwan.
So the countries where this transaction changes the competitive picture are mostly not in ASEAN. What it changes here is the identity of the counterparty for anyone with a commercial relationship touching the residual foodpanda business, and the strategic question of whether a single global operator behind Grab's main competitor changes Grab's position.
We reported yesterday that Uber is cutting 3,300 roles and 20 per cent of manager positions in a delayering. Announcing a US$14.8bn acquisition in the same week as 3,300 job cuts looks contradictory and is coherent. A company preparing to absorb an organisation this large needs to fix its own structure first.
What to watch
The acceptance rate at 5 November is the first real number. A minimum threshold of 50 per cent plus one share is low for a takeover of this size, and it means Uber is willing to proceed with a large minority left outside.
The second is whether any authority declines to accept the SSW carve-out as sufficient. This pre-agreed remedy is an offer rather than a final settlement. A regulator can still demand more if it finds the divestiture package inadequate, for instance if SSW Partners lacks scale or if the remaining overlap is broader than the companies claim.
The third is what SSW Partners does with 14 country businesses bought at a discount. An investment firm holding delivery operations across 14 markets is a new competitor in each of them, or a seller into further consolidation, and which of those it turns out to be will not be clear for some time. This article is not investment advice.
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