AN emergency board meeting will take place this week after Crawley-based First Choice Holidays lost its fight to prevent a takeover.

Manchester firm Airtours announced yesterday it was on the verge of taking control of the company in a £1 billion deal.

The merger will create the biggest tour operator in the country.

But there are fears of job losses in Crawley as a result of the impending takeover.

Airtours chairman David Crossland admitted to the Argus when news of the takeover bid emerged last month that some redundancies would be inevitable.

He said: "We will try to keep the losses to a minimum."

The Argus revealed in March that First Choice had already agreed to a £1.4 billion merger with Swiss company Kuoni Travel before the rival bid was launched.

In a bitterly fought battle, First Choice chairman Ian Club vowed to "fight like a cornered rat" and urged shareholders to reject the Airtours bid.

But Airtours has managed to buy 49 per cent of shares in First Choice and say shareholders owning a further two per cent have agreed in principle to accept the deal.

Bosses at First Choice today urged shareholders to hold fire on handing overall control of the company to Airtours.

Spokesman Lesley Allen said: "Nothing final has been decided as we still have to wait and see what the Mergers Commission said.

"The board has always said it will fight a take-over bid like this and they will be watching with interest to see the results of the commission's investigations.

"We still believe a merger of this scale will not be allowed to go ahead as it will significantly decrease competition and customers will lose out."

A spokesman for the Crawley chamber of commerce said members were watching developments.

He said: "It is obviously still too early to speculate and we will have to wait and see what happens, but the main concern is how jobs may be affected.

"However, we believe a company the size of First Choice is obviously going to need a base in Crawley so hopefully most staff will not be too badly affected."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.