Management at FedEx have announced their integration plans with TNT.


FedEx Chief Financial Officer Alan Graf said, “We have a solid integration plan that we are in the process of validating with live data. I’ve looked at it now for a lot of months and [TNT has] the best [cargo delivery] road network in Europe by far. When you layer all of our international businesses around the world coming into Europe at that efficient, productive, low-cost network … all of a sudden you start multiplying the benefits in there—they’re very high.”

Referring to the acquisition, that is the largest in FedEx’s history FedEx chairman, president and CEO Fred Smith said, “two plus two equals seven … so to speak”. The merger cost €4.4 billion.

FedEx EVP-market development and corporate communications Mike Glenn said TNT’s “culture is very, very similar to ours,” which he predicted will help smooth the integration process. Cultural issues are well known to cause problems in merger programmes, and this is a very good sign that the new company will be able to operate in the way it intended.

Glenn said FedEx is aware of TNT’s strong brand recognition in parts of Europe and will be strategic in transitioning to the FedEx brand. “There are certain countries where the TNT brand is quite strong and actually has a higher level of awareness than the FedEx brand,” he explained. “There are other countries where the FedEx brand is stronger, there are other countries where they’re approximately the same and we have a brand-transition scenario for all three of those. So it will take us some time, but we’re going to be patient to make sure that we make these changes at the right time, because candidly we want to leverage the strength of the TNT brand during the integration.”