Small Package Freight

Consolidation of European Small Package Freight Possible

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If you ship to or in Europe the UPS bid for TNT could limit your choices and raise prices over time. UPS sees this move as favorable and profitable. The article below asks if the other big players will step in. If they do the outcome will not be much different but the beneficiary will be. Shippers will pay the price in some manner.

Will FedEx bid for TNT Express?
UPS buyout offer prompts talk of possible bidding war.
By Mark B. Solomon            www.dcvelocity.com
Now that UPS Inc. has proposed to ante up $6.4 billion for TNT Express, will FedEx Corp. see its chief rival and raise it a few billion dollars?

Atlanta-based UPS’s unexpected and unsolicited Feb. 17 bid for TNT Express prices the offer at 9 euros a share, or $11.87 a share in U.S. currency. TNT Express’s rejection of the UPS proposal sets up a possible bidding war between the two U.S.-based parcel giants for the Dutch delivery concern, one of the big four global parcel players.

At stake is no less than possible domination of the intra-European delivery market by UPS—and whether FedEx, or the third big global competitor, DHL Express, will let it happen. …

Electricity

RechargeTexas.com report – Warning: New Proposals Designed to Increase Prices, Company Profits

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Read the full report but this excerpt shows how regulators act. If there are going to incentives there should be strings attached and not to our checkbooks.

RechargeTexas.com report – Warning: New Proposals Designed to Increase Prices, Company Profits

…So this brings us to question No. 2, which is really all about how we should go about fixing the problem, such as it is. The solution offered by some in Austin is to implement new rules — rules that by their very design will increase prices. I’ll say it again.  There’s an important policy debate going on about how we can make electricity more expensive. Generation companies say that want more profits so they’ll have the economic incentive to build more power plants. But they also offer no guarantees. All we have is the hope that by throwing money at generation companies, that they somehow will make our reliability challenges go away.

What are some of the most troubling proposals? Under one, regulators would raise or eliminate existing price offer caps for wholesale energy.  Like other states, Texas currently enforces these caps to protect the public against Enron-style price gouging, and to ensure the wholesale power market does not go haywire. These caps do not exist to stifle competition, but rather to ensure that prices do not shoot beyond what we would expect to find in a healthy market. If Texas adopts higher price offer caps, it won’t be long before the wholesale market hits them. This will lead to higher electricity prices at home. The situation could be much worse for consumers if there’s no cap at all. …