On Mar 12, 8:11*pm, Arthur Figgis wrote:
On 12/03/2011 00:48, john b wrote:

Many UK-based train companies have been successful (or at least,
profitable) at running public transport overseas - Stagecoach, First
and NEG all do, and Arriva did well enough that Deutsche Bahn paid two
billion euros for them and put Arriva management in charge of all its
international operations.

Though they is the issue that foreign state-owned[1] companies can buy
up "British" businesses, but we have no equivalent doing the opposite.
BRB Residuary isn't going to be bidding for any German operating
contracts, and while French companies can run our passenger trains,
British firms - state or private - can't run theirs.

Arriva ran lots of trains in Germany. As part of the DB deal, to avoid
breaking competition rules, they've been sold to a joint venture
between the Italian state rail operator and a French private equity
fund. It also ran trains in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Czech
Republic and Poland (and still does, although obviously now it's DB-
owned. FirstGroup still has a joint venture with the Danish state rail
operator to run trains in Sweden. National Express used to run trains
in Australia.

France is the exception, not the rule, here (and yes, the way in which
it dodges competition legislation is an outrage) - almost everywhere
else in Europe, there are plenty of trains operated by companies of
all nationalities, some state-owned, some joint ventures, and some
privately owned.

If the Arriva deal
goes wrong, will the Bundestag allow DB to go the way of GNER and NXEC?

I'm not clear what you mean here. The Bundestag would happily allow
(and would probably be breaking the law if it didn't allow) ATW, XC or
Chiltern to go the way of GNER and NXEC if they were unviable. But the
Arriva deal isn't going to affect the regulated services that DB
operates in Germany one way or another (well, it might have a marginal
impact on economies of scale, group expertise, etc, but nothing
major).

[1] Germans often claim DB is "privatised" because it is structured as a
company rather than as a ministry of railways. By that definition, many
British nationalised industries were privately owned, not nationalised.

True, it's clearly not privatised.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org