On Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:17:07 +0000 [UTC], Arthur Figgis wrote:
On 04/01/2012 10:11, Lüko Willms wrote:
A follow up to my previous reply to

Am 03.01.2012 14:34, schrieb Recliner:

Who appoints the directors and senior managers in DB, and sets the
objectives, etc? Presuming it's the government, it's the government
that controls the company.

Up to 1993, both Deutsche Bundesbahn and Deutsche Reichsbahn were
actually _administrations,_ part of the state apparatus. Important posts
were civil servants, even the engineers.

Which is a difference between Germany and Britain - we just go by who
owns it (to the extent the issue ever arises, do Germans consider
pre-privatisation (IYSWIM!) British Rail to have been private?)

I suspect that they would say the pre-privatisation TOCs were
privatised.

It seems to me that we have in the UK:-
- State organisations (e.g. NHS, British Transport Commission);
- Wholly state-owned companies (e.g. the operating subsidiaries of the
BTC such as Crosville or Bristol Omnibus) in which all shares are held
by the state and are not traded at all, but which potentially could be
traded in the future, a situation which we call "Nationalised";
- Partially state-owned companies, where some shares are openly traded
but others are held by the state and cannot be bought or sold, which
we would call "Part-privatised"; and
- Private companies, where *all* shares are openly traded, regardless
of who own those shares.

Whereas, it seems to me that in Germany, the setup is:-
- State organisations (e.g. Deutsche Bundesbahn)
- Wholly state owned companies, where all shares are currently held by
the state and are not traded at all, but which potentially could be
traded in the future, a situation which in Germany is called
"privatised".

(The partially state-owned and wholly private companies are, I assume,
just seen as either private or privatised depending on their history
and possibly the political views of the person discussing them).

In any case, the Germans seem to consider DB AG to be "privatised",
where we would (in layman's terms) say it is a "nationalised company"
or possibly that it has been "vested as a trading company" if we were
trying to be clever (and that's probably the wrong description anyway,
so we wouldn't be being that clever!).
--
Ross

Speaking for me, myself and I. Nobody else
- unless I make it clear that I am...