German rail operator Deutsche Bahn’s management board has asked its supervisory board for the go-ahead to prepare a sale of its international logistics subsidiary Schenker.
This comes as per documents reviewed by Reuters released in December.
According to these documents, the formality would allow management to: “examine and prepare a sale of up to 100 per cent of the shares in Schenker.”
This gives the state-backed train company the opportunity to consider a complete or partial sale to Schenker’s competitors or to financial investors.
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Schenker, which provides logistics for sea, land and air freight, recently accounted for more than a third of Deutsche Bahn’s sales.
Schenker achieved an operating profit of almost €1.2 billion ($1.26 billion) in the first half of 2022.
The document stated: “The cash flows generated as part of a sale remain entirely within the Deutsche Bahn Group.”
This should help reduce the rail operator’s debt burden of around €30 billion ($32.2 billion).
A final decision on a sale has not yet been made.
