Tag: Sweden

Privatisation fever grips La Poste and Deutsche Bahn

Posted by | Sep 10, 2008 | |

There’s a new whiff of privatisation in the air. Two of mainland Europe’s biggest state-owned utilities, La Poste in France and Deutsche Bahn in Germany, have signalled they are planning for an injection of private capital as they gear up for liberalisation of EU markets in the post and on the railways.
The postal market is due to be fully competitive from 2011 while the rail market will pre-date it by two years. But the two behemoths are already planning their transformation, with DB’s Hartmut Mehdorn, its chief executive, saying its float of 24.9 pct of its transport, logistics and services arm will take place in late October. This could raise EUR 5bn in one of Europe’s biggest most recent IPOs.
The more extraordinary of the two operations is that of La Poste. Throughout the tortuous negotiations among EU institutions over postal liberalisation, originally slated for 2009, the French operator was among the fiercest critics of full-scale competition – unlike the British, Germans and Swedes. But Jean-Paul Bailly, its chairman, has had a Damascene conversion.
He now wants to raise up to EUR 3bn to help finance La Poste’s European expansion and to get the legal process in place so that the public enterprise, changed into a SA (PLC), can open up its capital as early as 2011. Rather than attract pension funds, Bailly apparently wants to raise capital via the stockmarket. The state, probably in the form of its investment arm, the CDC, could play a restricted role and the 400,000 current and retired employees would be reserved their share. But the target is institutional and retail investors.
The British group, in its submission to the independent (Hooper) review of the postal market, complains repeatedly of its limited equity capital as its struggles to deal with losses in its declining universal, six-day letters service and what it claims is a GBP 2.6bn cash gap caused by price controls. Its regulator, Postcomm, openly favours the injection of private capital and private sector partnerships to enable a “more rapid transformation” and make it more efficient and profitable.
But it’s far from clear how this would be achieved and experts believe that private capital will only be available if Royal Mail is broken up, with profitable parts of its business like Parcelforce sold off. Meanwhile, the Greeks and Estonians are thinking of privatising their postal operator. The Danes and Swedes are getting together, with the Danish state, postal employees and private equity group CVC owning 40% and the Swedish state and employees of Posten owning the other 60% of the combined operation.
Unless the Hooper report comes up with some radical proposals and this or the next government is ready to bite the bullet, the Brits, the privatisation pioneers, are in danger of being left behind in the EU – again.

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Posten Logistik expands in Finland

Posted by | Sep 9, 2008 | |

Posten Logistik is now taking one more step towards realizing its Nordic strategy. Through the partnership with the Finnish travel and transport company Matkahuolto, a distribution network for parcels is established in Finland. Thereby Posten Logistik is strengthening its ability to harness the increasing international flows of goods both to and within the Nordic countries.

The logistics flows to, from and within the Nordic region are growing heavily, largely due to the fact that private individuals are increasingly ordering goods via the Internet and post order. At the same time, companies’ home markets are expanding. Companies with customers in several Nordic countries want to run their businesses without having to consider the country borders, and they are requesting cross-border, cost-efficient, and complete solutions to an ever-greater degree.

The expansion of the MyPack concept to Finland is an important step in Posten Logistik’s strategy to become a strong Nordic logistics company. In September 2007 it acquired the Finnish company Suomen Logistiikkatalo Oy, operative in the third-party logistics and inventory management areas. In 2007, Posten Logistik also established a network of over 600 pick-up points in Norway. In 2008, it acquired the entire Norwegian company Tollpost Globe, which had its own infrastructure and nationwide distribution in Norway.

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FedEx Express to deliver broadest next-business-day service from Europe to the Eastern United States

Posted by | Sep 2, 2008 | |

FedEx Express has upgraded its next-business-day delivery service FedEx International Priority from Europe to major U.S. East Coast cities. Customers who had two-business-day service can now reach more than 3,500 zip codes in key markets along the U.S. East Coast overnight. Customers already enjoying next-business-day delivery service to this region benefit from later pick-up times of up to six hours.

To support the service upgrade, FedEx will launch a new westbound trans-Atlantic flight and fly a wide-body MD-11 freighter daily, Tuesday through Friday, between Paris, Charles de Gaulle Airport and Newark, N.J. The Europe-to-U.S. flight segment comprises part of the FedEx westbound ‘around-the-world’ flight, which enables FedEx to provide customers with access to key markets around the world with highly competitive transit times. The company will also introduce two new Airbus A310 flights, including flights originating from Barcelona and Budapest-Vienna, to offer customers in these areas later pick-up times for enhanced next-business-day service to the U.S.

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Finland still lagging behind in consumer e-invoicing

Posted by | Sep 1, 2008 | |

Finland has yet to make any headway with regard to switching to the e-invoicing of consumers, even though we are already one of the international leaders in business-to-business e-invoicing. According to an extensive Itella Information survey, Denmark holds the lead in both consumer and business e-invoicing. The survey was conducted in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany during the spring of 2008. Consumer interviews were used to investigate over 3,300 people¡¦s experiences of e-invoicing. More than 1,600 people were interviewed with regard to business-to-business invoicing.
According to the survey, consumers in the Nordic countries and Germany around 7 to 8 per person monthly.ƒ{receive roughly the same number of invoices Hard copy is still the most common invoice format, with the exception of Denmark. In all of the countries, however, hard copies¡¦ share of all invoices has decreased since 2006.
Denmark is in a class of its own with regard to e-invoicing. Only 32 per cent of Danish people nowadays report that they receive their invoices primarily in hard copy format. In the other countries around 75 per cent of consumers receive their invoices primarily in hard copy format. The Danes receive their e-invoices through both the online bank and invoice issuers¡¦ websites or invoice and e-commerce portals.
The Finns and Danes exhibit contrasting conduct with regard to payment, too. In Finland, online banking is commonly used for payments, while few invoices are received there. Danes commonly receive reminders of their due invoices through an online bank, but favour direct debiting.
In Finland, almost 80 per cent of large companies plan on sending the majority of their invoices in electronic format within 2 to 3 years. Among SMEs, Finnish ones are the most eager to make the switch to e-invoicing. Some 78 per cent of Finnish SMEs believe that they will be solely or partially using e-invoicing within the following 2 to 3 years.
– According to our survey, almost all businesses and organisations intend to make the switch to e-invoicing in the forthcoming years. The only exception is Germany, in which only 65 per cent are considering this. The underlying reason for Finnish businesses¡¦ enthusiasm for e-invoicing is the desire to achieve time and cost savings through this invoicing method, Savolainen states.
According to the survey, Finnish SMEs will be switching to e-invoicing in a more pronounced fashion than elsewhere.

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DHL Sweden company cars to be eco-friendly

Posted by | Aug 28, 2008 | |

DHL Sweden will invest in a fleet of company cars consisting entirely of environmentally friendly vehicles. The current fleet consists of 439 vehicles, of which 44 percent already run on alternative fuels. This is the start of a long line of environmental projects as part of GOGREEN, DHL’s global environmental program.

The intention is that by 2020 at the latest, DHL will have reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent in comparison to 2007 levels.

Currently DHL in Sweden has a total of 439 company cars, of which 193, or approximately 44 percent, are clean cars. Common environmentally friendly models within the DHL company car fleet are the SAAB 9-3 BioPower, the SAAB 9-5 BioPower and the Volvo V70 Flexifuel.

DHL is to use the Vägverket (Swedish National Road Administration) list of environmentally friendly vehicles, and from now on all company cars that are leased out to employees must be environmentally friendly. Within three years at the very latest, current non-environmentally friendly company cars should also have been replaced with alternatives that meet stricter environmental requirements.

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