Takeaway.com says merger with Delivery Hero an option -paper

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Dutch Takeaway.com sees a merger with German peer Delivery Hero as a possibility in a potential consolidation of the European meal delivery market, Chief Executive Jitse Groen told a German daily.

"In each country, there can only be one supplier," Groen was quoted as saying by German daily Tagesspiegel on Saturday. "A merger (with Delivery Hero) would be an option."

A Delivery Hero spokesman declined to comment. But a person close to the matter said last week that the two companies were currently not in talks about a potential combination.

The two companies are market leaders in Germany's meal delivery business.

Delivery Hero, which floated on the Frankfurt stock exchange in 2017 and whose competitors also include Deliveroo, UberEATS and Amazon, has grown into a global company thanks to a string of deals.

Meal orders at Takeaway.com's German unit Lieferando are estimated to have outstripped those of Delivery Hero's top German brands Lieferheld and Pizza.de by 20 percent, Groen told the newspaper.

Delivery Hero CEO Niklas Oestberg said in November the company "had more orders in Germany than our peers."

(Reporting by Arno Schuetze; editing by Clelia Oziel)