Tag: Europe

Deutsche Post still to decide on selling Postbank

Posted by | May 26, 2008 | |

Deutsche Post hasn’t decided whether to sell its majority stake in German lender Deutsche Postbank AG as the company considers options for the holding.

Germany’s largest banks have been positioning themselves for takeovers since Deutsche Post, which owns 50 percent plus one share of Postbank, said last year it was assessing a possible sale. German newspaper Handelsblatt cited Postbank CEO Wolfgang Klein as saying in an interview that he expects Deutsche Post to decide on the future of the lender by fall.

Speculation about a sale of the bank has been fueled by a report in Manager Magazin that Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG and Munich-based insurer Allianz SE made a combined bid for Postbank valued at about 10 billion euros (USD 15.7 billion). Appel declined to comment today on the report. Deutsche Post has started to collect bids for Postbank, Die Welt reported May 23.

The German government wants to be assured that a sale of Postbank, the country’s largest consumer bank by customers, would result in a stronger banking industry, Economy Minister Michael Glos said in a Bloomberg Television interview May 23. The German government controls about 30 percent of Deutsche Post through development bank KfW Group. Commerzbank Chief Executive Officer Martin Blessing said in a separate interview that he “can imagine a lot” in German banking consolidation.

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DHL expands global network and operations with new state-of-the-art European air hub

Posted by | May 26, 2008 | |

DHL has officially opened its new European air freight hub at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany. The hub, one of Europe’s largest construction sites, expands DHL’s international network, providing greater connectivity to global growth markets and enabling DHL to improve its overall customer service.

Approximately 300 million Euros has been invested by Deutsche Post World Net in the construction of the DHL air freight hub Leipzig/Halle which enhances DHL’s speed, connectivity and reach in a number of ways. It is situated at a crossroads to provide direct North-South and East-West access to Europe, and connects both established and emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia.

The decisive criteria for the choice of location were the position of the airport, its proximity to growth markets in Eastern Europe, the long-term planning security with comprehensive authorization for night-time flights, the wealth of motivated and highly qualified locally-based personnel, and impressive infrastructure which allows for a future-oriented combination of the carriers air, road and rail.

The hub comprises of a distribution center, an aircraft hangar, apron, tank station and administration building. The amount of freight transshipped every working day is currently around 1,500 tons per night but by 2012 this figure is set to rise to 2,000 tons.

Leipzig is the first DHL facility able to meet its needs for electricity, heating and cooling energy, to a large extent self-sufficiently. This is ensured by a cogeneration unit for combined heat and power generation, together with 1,000 square meters of solar cells on the roof of the hangar workshop for the generation of electricity from solar energy. In addition, two underground cisterns, with a capacity of 300 cubic meters each collecting around 3,000 cubic meters of rain water each year, will be used instead of drinking water to wash the aircraft.

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Pin Group liquidator mandated by shareholders to continue operations

Posted by | May 26, 2008 | |

The liquidator of troubled German mail services company Pin Group AG S.A., Bruno Kuebler, has been mandated to continue its business in case he fails to find a buyer for the group.

Kuebler said in a statement he is optimistic he will find a buyer for the company. He said he is still in talks with three unidentified potential buyers.

France’s La Poste walked away from talks at the end of March, according to the statement.

PIN Group ran into trouble in December when publishing group and majority stakeholder Axel Springer AG stopped funding it after the German government decided to introduce minimum wages to the postal industry. Some 40 of its 91 units have filed for insolvency.

The company in 2007 reached full-year sales of 278 million euros, below the 346 million target, and negative earnings before earnings and tax (EBIT) of 68 million.

Kuebler said in the statement PIN’s debt as part of the insolvency procedures amount to more than 200 million euros.

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Swiss Post launches parcel pickup service

Posted by | May 26, 2008 | |

Swiss Post Swiss Post has launched a fee-based service for the pickup of inland addressed parcels of private customers and small businesses.

The new pickup service can be ordered online via the internet and includes collection of a maximum of five parcels per day from an address which does not necessarily need to be the same as the sender’s address.

The service fee depends on the amount of parcels. Swiss Post is offering introductory prices until the end of the year: collection of one parcel costs euro 2,80 instead of euro 3,-, collection of two parcels cost euro 3,70 and collection of three to five parcels cost euro 5,55 instead of euro 6,20.

The new service complements the internet solution named WebStamp introduced by Swiss Post two years ago. With WebStamp, customers can stamp and personalise their shipments via the internet. The parcel pickup service enables private and business customers to handle all their shipments from home or the office.

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Agreement in principle on new collective labour agreement for TNT

Posted by | May 24, 2008 | |

TNT and the trade unions ABVAKABO FNV, CNV Publieke Zaak, BVPP and VPP reached an agreement in principle on a new one-year collective labour agreement in constructive negotiations. The agreement will come into force with retroactive effect to 1 April 2008 and will apply to all TNT employees in the Netherlands.
The unions will present the agreement to their members with advice to accept. This puts an end to the planned industrial action.
The key arrangements are as follows:
• All employees will receive a salary rise in the form of a structural increase of 3 pct with retroactive effect to 1 April 2008, plus 0.5 pct in the form of a monthly payment until 1 April 2009;
• The monthly payment of 0.5 pct will become a structural increase with retroactive effect to 1 April 2008 if a consensus is reached by no later than 1 April 2009 on the following:
o an Operations collective labour agreement for employees in scales 1 to 4 at TNT Post’s Operations business unit
o market-level terms and conditions of employment for Operations, Marketing & Sales and the policy and support units for employees who do not fall under the planned collective labour agreement for Operations
o market-level terms and conditions of employment for the employees of TNT Post Parcel Service, including the Transport unit
o a separate collective labour agreement for Express, TNT Head Office, Spring, Cendris and European Mail Networks (EMN)
o the monthly payment will lapse if no agreement is reached by 31 March 2009
• The agreement running until 1 April 2009 will not include any form of retrenchment in the terms and conditions of employment.

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