Gunnar Wulff, the chief executive of southern Sweden’s regional transport company Öresundståg, has announced it is to be taken over by Veolia Transport.
Currently operated by DSBFirst, the joint venture has faced many financial difficulties.
DSB and Öresundståg made an agreement to ensure their continued operations.
Over the next 6 months, Veolia will take charge of Öresundståg services with the aim of being fully responsible for the transport authority by December this year.
The contract will run until the end of 2013 to ensure Öresundståg has enough time to tender for a longer term operator.
“I expect that employees in DSBFirst Sweden are offered employment with the new operator. The Danish staff in DSBFirst Sweden, depending on their type of contract will be either transferred company or return to the DSB or DSBFirst Denmark,” said Gert Frost, acting CEO DSBFirst ApS and DSB Sverige AB.
The joint venture DSBFirst has two other contracts for local services in Sweden and Denmark.
FirstGroup has opted for DSB to buy out its share in DSBFirst Väst, which operates services around Göteborg in Sweden.
FirstGroup also has a contract to run regional services across the Øresund bridge.
FirstGroup have also said they intend to withdraw from this joint venture but DSB have asked them to wait until their financial issues are resolved.
By selling one group of Danish rail services to Veolia and wishing to withdraw from another, First Group is obviously following the other British bus/train operators in realising that they cannot compete in Western Europe with the “big, rich, boys” of France and Germany. As their bus operations in USA also appear to be struggling, might we see them becoming a takeover target in the not too distant future?