Where to even start....
Although I make money from them, indirectly via several other companies, I don't work for DHL but have many business friends and ex-colleagues who do....And based on ( too ! ) many '
I hate it here ' dinners and conversations, it seems they just might be one of the world's worst run ( or most unlucky - depends entirely on your point of view ) companies saved from themselves only by the fact that they were and remain a virtual monopoly in the German postal market...
If what I'm told and hear is to be believed, the whole Deutsche Post DHL organisation seems to be the most arrogant, self-believing, useless company to have emerged in Europe for decades....and also containing fundreds of people with a VP of Something job title and no ' real ' job.....
As I prefer talking football, aircraft, women, anything but business when I'm having dinner and a glass of something, I did a bit of Googling and....
Advised for years my Management Consultants, and with the majority of current Senior Management recruited from the same Management Consultants, they seem to have have morphed into a Germancentric bunch of losers...Saved from oblivion only by the ongoing virtual postal monopoly in the Fatherland and the continued political support of the German government which is still a major shareholder....
DHL ? Successful international company for years, bought by Deutsche Post in the early 90's, eventually ended up as a joke in the USA, running at losses of over $ 1 billion per year until they shut down the US business last year....
EAT ? Did what it was asked / told to do for the ( now German ) DHL, and then someone decided that the Brussels hub would actually be better if it was in Leipzig....No coincidence there, then....
DANZAS ? Originally Swiss based, spent almost a century growing to become maybe the world's best known and largest Freight Forwarding organisation until bought by the Germans in the about 10 years ago....People in the industry not surprised that since Management was transferred from Switzerland to Germany a few years ago, now at the centre of Price Fixing allegations and investigations....
AIRBORNE ? Once a reasonably successful overnight carrier in the USA, the Germans spent billions buying the business about seven years ago and now, no more than six or seven years later, nether the name nor the airline nor the business exists since DHL USA closed down its USA domestic business last year...Ask the Astar guys what it was like being associated with the Postmen....
LOGISTICS - About six years ago, the Germans bought a UK company called Exel, probably the biggest and most profitatble Logisitics/Freight Forwarding company in the world, changed the name to DHL ( except in the USA where that would just have been the kiss of death ) and is now believed to be losing money big-time....
In addition to the current regulatory problems, late 2009 they made an announcement that 400 back-office jobs were to be transferrd from DHL's Brussels European HO to....Guess where....Yes, Germany !! And despite union requests for full consultation over redundancy terms, the Germans have decided to halt the negotiation process and it's everyman for himself, as they say....Meanwhile, there are believed to be several thousand ' untouchables ' still drawing a salary in Germany although they stay at home each day, because they have old German Government ' Jobs for Life ' contracts....
Anybody see a pattern emerging here ???
And then two years ago, the previously highly respected ( in Germany, anyway ) CEO was arrested and charged for evading personal income taxes....Unlucky ?? Greedy seems a more appropriate description....
And we should be surprised they broke contractual terms with non-German employees ??