The COVID-19 outbreak has unsurprisingly impacted businesses and retailers alike.

Grab and Gojek are certainly no exception and there are rumours floating around that both companies are discussing a potential merger, at least according to The Information.

According To Reports…

They were supposedly informed that the management of both Grab and Gojek have held multiple meetings over the past two years and that the merger decisions have grown serious over the course of the last few months.

In fact, the site also claims that the latest discussions which involved Grab President Ming Maa and Gojek CEO Andre Soelistyo happened just last month.

However, according to them, the merger is yet to be confirmed as there are disagreements as to how control of the combined firm will be split.

The Information also reported that Gojek doesn’t want its operations to be absorbed into Grab, while Grab supposedly told its major investors that Gojek wants a deal where its shareholders would own half of the companies’ combined Indonesian operations.

There was also talk that it would receive regulatory scrutiny given that Grab’s earlier acquisition of Uber’s South-east Asian business had violated Singapore’s anti-competition laws.

However…

Gojek Denies Report On Merger Talks With Grab

However, Gojek has stepped forward to clarify that this is not true. They have denied the report that it is in a discussion on a potential merger with Grab.

A spokesman from Gojek spoke to The Business Times to deny this saying, “There are no plans for any sort of merger, and recent media reports regarding discussions of this nature are not accurate.”

At the time of writing, according to The Straits Times, Grab has declined to comment.

However, it’s worthwhile to note that just last week, Nikkei reported that Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan’s largest bank had agreed to invest US$700 million in Grab.

Also, it’s worthwhile to note that back in the days when Grab was rumoured to “merge” with Uber, it started with rumours as well.

I guess everyone’s crossing their fingers now; you know what’ll happen if they do merge. We’ve that experience before.