Actually, one of the other big international shipping firms, PSA International, nearly won the bid. P&O shareholders had accepted their $6.3 billion offer on 1/27/06, but DPW raised the bid to $6.5 billion, and PSO officially dropped out of the race 2/13/06.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4649360.stm
As for your second question, I fail to understand how DPW expects to make money if, as all the apologists for the deal have claimed, nothing is going to change when they take over. This is actually a highly profitable operation that two huge international businesses were in a bidding war over, and the problem is, since the CSX rail corporation sold the operation to P & O in 2004, there’s no American firm in the business that has the money to outbid these international giants.