The Danish transportation giant DSV has over time shown a strong ability to efficiently and profitably carry out large acquisitions of competitors. 

One of the measures has been large rounds of layoffs among the acquired employees, but this could mean that Deutsche Bahn may not wish to sell DB Schenker to DSV, according to Danish business media Finans.

In connection with the last three major acquisitions of Uti, Panalpina and Gil, DSV has subsequently dismissed around 45 percent of the new employees when functions, staffs and divisions have been merged with the existing business in the Danish group.

”This model has worked really well for DSV. DB Schenker is of course a different deal, simply because it is such a large acquisition, but I don’t see DSV deviating from this model,” Tobias Fromme, analyst at Finansuset Bernstein, says to Finans.

”The ability to reduce the number of employees is crucial, and that’s what gives DSV the upper hand against competitors,” he says. 

It is also this successful model that is likely to enable DSV to bid the highest for DB Schencker.

The challenge, however, is that owner Deutsche Bahn’s board is made up of a large number of former German politicians who are focused on job preservation.

”The money must go directly to Deutsche Bahn, and then we must have a job guarantee for all DB Schenker employees. Both things must be in place,” Martin Burkert, board member of Deutsche Bahn and former member of the Bundestag for the German Social Democrats, has previously told the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, according to Finans.