Canadian Pacific Goes Public With $28 Billion Norfolk Offer

  • Suitor's `sizable' premium gets a muted response from target
  • CEO Harrison tries again to create transcontinental carrier

An eastbound Norfolk Southern Corp. auto rack train passes through Waddy, Kentucky.

Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. went public with an offer of about $28 billion for Norfolk Southern Corp., wooing the U.S. company’s shareholders to get behind a deal that would create a transcontinental railroad.

The gambit renews Chief Executive Officer Hunter Harrison’s effort to link Canada’s second-largest carrier with one of the big operators in the eastern U.S. Talks faltered with CSX Corp. in late 2014 but didn’t end Harrison’s quest to write a final chapter in consolidating the North American industry.