The German national railway Deutsche Bahn said Monday it would buy the British company Laing Rail and its lucrative passenger transport unit Chiltern Railways, thus becoming a major actor in the British rail sector.
Financial details were not revealed but the Financial Times Deutschland has estimated the transaction is worth 170 million euros (247 million dollars). The newspaper also said that Deutsche Bahn had defeated a competing bid by the French national railway SNCF.
With its purchase of Laing Rail, Deutsche Bahn gains control of Chiltern Railways and also 50-percent stakes in two other companies jointly held by Laing Rail. Chiltern Railways, "the fastest growing (rail) company in Great Britain" according to Deutsche Bahn, carries passengers between London and Birmingham as well as between London and Aylesbury.
Its operating license runs until 2021. The group has 2007 sales of around 160 million euros and transported 17 million passengers. Although it is the German group's first acquisition in the British passenger rail sector, Deutsche Bahn is already present in the freight area following its take-over of the transport group EWS.
For the past several years, Deutsche Bahn has focused on foreign operations, first in freight and now in passenger transport too, to compensate for stagnating activities in Germany. The group suffers in its domestic market from a deteriorating image fes. Deutsche Bahn set off controversy last week by threatening to transfer jobs abroad to compensate for an 11 percent wage increase won by train drivers.