Fees bonanza as Germans buy Wiseman

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The Wiseman family, which still owns 35% of the shares, and investors with another 20% have already agreed the 390p cash offer. That is at a 60% premium to the price at which Wiseman shares were trading before it revealed the bid approach on Friday.

The deal will produce welcome fees for both sides' City advisers with Müller's Rothschild likely to pick up the best part of £2.1 million and Wiseman's joint banks, Greenhill and Investec, set to share a similar amount.

Executive chairman Robert Wiseman said: "The combination of Müller and Wiseman makes strong commercial and strategic sense, creating a leading integrated dairy business in the United Kingdom with complementary positions in the yogurt and potted desserts market and the fresh milk market."

Wiseman's management will stay on to work for the family-owned Müller. The German firm currently buys 219 billion litres of milk a year in the UK, none of it from Wiseman.

Wiseman said in a trading statement today that, while recent sales had been in line with management expectations, rising diesel prices and lower cream prices over Christmas meant conditions remained "challenging".

The company, founded in 1949 and floated in 1994, accounts for a third of all milk sold in the UK. Müller began as a small Bavarian village dairy created by Ludwig Müller, whose grandson Theo heads the company today. The shares today rose 60.88p to 388.88p.