Tag: USA

Microsoft Product Veteran Joins Earth Class Mail as VP of Product Management

Posted by | Jan 28, 2008 | |

Earth Class Mail Corp., a global service that delivers postal mail online, announces the appointment of 15-year Microsoft veteran Rajeev Dujari as its Vice President of Product Management.

Dujari will be responsible for defining the product roadmap for the company’s breakthrough online postal-mail delivery service. Continued software innovation and operational efficiency will accelerate the growth of Earth Class Mail’s international customer base. Earth Class Mail’s customer base includes individuals, small businesses, enterprises, government agencies, military branches and national postal services.

“We are truly fortunate to attract senior talent like Rajeev to Earth Class Mail, especially given our strategic partnership with Microsoft’s Postal Group and the strong alignment of our investor base (including lead venture investor Ignition Partners) with Microsoft,” said Ron Wiener, CEO of Earth Class Mail. “Having such a high level of Microsoft expertise within our engineering leadership will help to streamline integration of our web-based application, which is built on the Microsoft .NET platform, and will synergize with key Office System components such as Outlook and SharePoint Portal Server.”

At Microsoft, Dujari established a track record of delivering globally recognized innovation in products and services. During his first 10 years at the company, he made key technical contributions to Microsoft’s Windows operating system and five major releases of its Internet Explorer web browser. He was also an inventor on 12 issued patents, with two currently pending. Over the past five years, Dujari led product units charged with delivering major advances to the company’s Exchange Server, Office Live Meeting and Visual Studio products.

“I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to shape 18 well-known products at Microsoft,” said Dujari. “I’m excited to apply that experience in helping drive the creation of a global service for individuals, businesses and national posts at Earth Class Mail.”

Dujari’s areas of expertise include desktop clients, enterprise services, hosted services and software platforms and tools, as well as staff recruiting, mentoring, team-building and offshore project management. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a M.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his graduate research focused on parallel algorithms for real-time speech recognition.

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DHL denies sale to FedEx

Posted by | Jan 25, 2008 | |

A DHL spokesman says parent company Deutsche Post World Net has no plans to sell its U.S. Express delivery service to its Memphis-based rival FedEx Corp.

“There is no question about our exiting the U.S. business, a withdrawal can be completely ruled out,” DHL spokesman Jonathan Baker said in a phone interview with Memphis Business Journal, a Courier sister paper, Friday morning.

Baker said he’d been fielding calls from news media across the country after a story about a possible deal appeared in Financial Times Deutschland, a German business newspaper, Friday morning.

That report said Deutsche Post World Net was in talks with FedEx founder, chairman, president and CEO Frederick Smith about the possibility of a buyout or a partnership.

In return, Deutsche Post World Net would give FedEx a larger presence in the European market, according to the report.

DHL is the main customer for ABX Air, based in Wilmington. DHL has spent billions of dollars to build up its domestic presence. Nonetheless, U.S. operations lost USD 900 million last year and analysts don’t foresee a profit this year.

The company has said it will take an USD 874 million writedown of the value of its struggling DHL Express business in the Americas. Baker said that move was more about accounting than sales and said DHL’s problems were industrywide.

“Just like everyone else, (our problems) are a result of economic conditions that have affected the industry as a whole,” he said. “We’re continuing improvement in our U.S. business and are dedicated to serving our customers.”

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Deutsche Post rises on report it may sell U.S. unit

Posted by | Jan 25, 2008 | |

Deutsche Post AG rose as much as 5.9 percent in German trading after Financial Times Deutschland said it may sell the unprofitable U.S. package and express-delivery unit to FedEx Corp.

Deutsche Post shares advanced as much as 1.27 euros to 22.70 euros and were up 3.9 percent at 12:15 p.m. in Frankfurt.

Bonn-based Deutsche Post may sell the U.S. delivery operation to FedEx and seek a merger partner for the Deutsche Postbank unit later this year, the German financial daily said today, citing unidentified company officials.

Deutsche Post spokeswoman Silje Skogstad declined to comment on plans for the U.S. DHL unit and said the company is evaluating several options to improve earnings. Regarding Deutsche Postbank, she referred to earlier comments by Chief Executive Officer Klaus Zumwinkel, who said the company is currently the lender’s most suitable owner.

“Elimination of these losses will provide a material boost to earnings,” London-based Collins Stewart analyst Andrew Fitchie said in a note to investors. “The clear message from the group is that restructuring is definitely under way, at long last.”

Deutsche Post will write down the value of the DHL Express Americas division by 600 million euros (USD 874 million), the company said Jan. 23. Chief Financial Officer John Allan said yesterday that the company would reveal details of a turnaround plan for the U.S. business in a “small number of months.”

The German company planned for DHL to break even in the Americas by 2009 and scrapped the deadline last year. The postal service bought the business in 2002 to compete with Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc. and Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx in their home market.

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FedEx in talks to buy DHL stake

Posted by | Jan 25, 2008 | |

FedEx reportedly is in talks to buy all or part of Deutsche Post’s DHL delivery business in the U.S. in a deal that would help it challenge larger rival UPS.

Seeking to cut losses in the hyper-competitive domestic fast delivery business, Deutsche Post may move to trim its DHL business in the United States, without abandoning it completely, according to published reports on Friday.

Deutsche Post CFO John Allan was quoted by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper, that a total sale of DHL in the U.S. is “very, very unlikely.”

A deal could be in the works by May at the latest, according to the report.

Shares of FedEx rose 1.6% to end at USD89.96, bucking the move down in the overall market. UPS fell 1.8% to USD69.97.

A spokesman for Memphis-based FedEx didn’t return a phone call from MarketWatch.

Analyst Rick Paterson of UBS said FedEx doesn’t really need DHL’s U.S. delivery assets, and that it simply has to wait for it to lose ground over time to eventually win over its domestic market share.

FedEx, however, would benefit if DHL allowed it to become the U.S. distributor of its hefty package traffic originating in Europe and Asia, he said.

FedEx would have the edge in any talks because Deutsche Post is under pressure from shareholders to produce some kind of value for DHL.

A deal between DHL and UPS is less likely because of the “more contentious relationship” between the two giants overseas, he said.

One of the world’s largest delivery companies with 4,000 offices, DHL traces its roots to 1969 in the U.S. before being acquired by Deutsche Post in 2002.

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Deutsche Post studying restructuring

Posted by | Jan 25, 2008 | |

Deutsche Post is considering its options for retail bank Postbank and its loss-making DHL Express unit in the United States but has not reached any decisions, a source close to the supervisory board told Reuters on Friday.

“There are considerations, but no decisions yet,” the person said. A second source familiar with the matter confirmed this.

Deutsche Post is exploring ways to stem losses from DHL in the United States, where economic weakness has stalled its recovery as it tries to take on dominant domestic rivals UPS and FedEx.

The company said this week it would write down around 600 million euros (USD879 million) on the value of the business after previously abandoning a target to break even at DHL in the United States in 2009.

And Deutsche Post’s chief executive, Klaus Zumwinkel, has said the role of Postbank in the group could be considered following the deregulation of the German mail market at the start of 2008. Many banks are interested, Zumwinkel told analysts in November.
His comments have been taken as a signal in the market that the bank would be sold.

The Financial Times Deutschland said on Friday that Postbank would be merged with another bank and not sold, while Post is in talks with FedEx about the U.S. package delivery business.

Teaming up with FedEx in the domestic U.S. business whilst offering FedEx a joint venture in Europe to enable it to deepen its presence could be the “most elegant solution for the massive profitability problems of DHL in the U.S.”, ING analysts wrote.

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