Germany's Linde Group assures investors on Praxair merger

BERLIN, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Linde Group, a leading industrial gas producer, on Thursday downplayed concerns over an announced merger with U.S. rival Praxair.

Speaking at the Munich-based firm's Annual General Meeting, Linde CEO Aldo Belloni expressed confidence that international antitrust authorities would approve the merger with Praxair.

"We are working together with Praxair and in constructive dialogue with competition authorities to complete the fusion by the second half of 2018," Belloni said.

Progress, he said, was also being made on divesting from individual units of two competitors to relieve concerns that the Linde-Praxair merger would create an overwhelmingly dominant player in the global industrial gas industry.

Linde and Praxair face a looming deadline for finalization of the merger on Oct. 24.

But they have agreed to grant each other the right to cancel the deal, if antitrust authorities demand that they surrender business worth more than 3.7 billion euros (4.4 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue of 1.1 billion euros in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebidta) as a condition for approving the transaction. Enditem