- PIN Group
Infobox_Company
company_name = PIN Group AG
company_
company_type = Public
company_slogan = "Schick es grün" ("send it green")
foundation = 1999 / 2005
location =Leudelange ,Luxembourg
key_people = Horst Piepenburg, CEO
industry =Postal Service ,Courier
revenue = sales€168.3 million (2006)
€275.0 million (2007)
num_employees = 9000 (Dec 2007)
products = Service company
homepage = [http://www.pin-group.net www.pin-group.net] The PIN Group is a German courier and postal services company with around 9000 employees. It belongs to PIN Group S.A., aLuxembourg -based corporate affiliation made up of several German postal companies.History and shareholding
The PIN Group originally traded under the name "Briefdienstleistungsunternehmen PIN intelligente Dienstleistungen AG", a postal services company founded in 1999 in
Berlin . In 2004,Axel Springer AG and the publishing groupVerlagsgruppe Holtzbrinck each bought a majority shareholding of 30% from the company founders and venture capital companyDKB Wagniskapital GmbH . In October 2005 the remaining shares of the PIN founders were acquired byWAZ-Mediengruppe and the Luxembourginvestment company Rosalia Investment S.A. before founding the PIN Group. In the summer of 2006 the newspaper publishersMadsack ,M. DuMont Schauberg , Rheinisch-BergischeVerlagsgesellschaft andW. Girardet merged their postal services divisions into the company, receiving in return a 10 per cent holding of PIN Group AG. Following the takeover of Briefnetz Süd GmbH & Co. KG (BNS), a consortium of postal services providers owned by 12 newspaper publishers inBavaria andBaden-Württemberg , since April 2007 the PIN Group has operated a mail delivery network throughout the whole of Germany. To offer delivery services to German authorities and government departments, the PIN Group acquiredUlm -based postal services provider DirektExpress.Since June 2007, the majority shareholder in the PIN Group has been the Axel Springer publishing company, after raising its holding from 23.5% to 71.6%. Axel Springer bought these shares from WAZ, Holtzbrinck and Rosalia for €510 million.
The holding company, PIN Group S.A. is responsible for laying down the strategy of the entire corporate affiliation and planning day to day operations, which are managed and organised by the German subsidiaries and shareholding companies.
In February 2007 around 7000 people worked for the PIN Group. The chairman of the executive board,
Günter Thiel announced that the company planned to expand to more than 20,000 employees by the end of 2007 [http://www.verdi.de/ German union for service providers, ver.di] ]In the autumn of 2007 PIN Group successfully acquired business from a variety of Germany cooperative savings banks.
In November 2007, the German
coalition government set theminimum wage for postal workers at €8 to €9.80 per hour. Due to the cost squeeze on ownerAxel Springer , the company was quoted by the GermanFinancial Times as examining "a variety of options" ranging from selling the company to closing down operations entirely. On 5 Dec 2007, PIN Group subsequently announced it was to lay off 1000 employees, more than 1/10th of the workforce, simultaneously criticising the German government for "consciously taking into account that investments worth billions to Germany ... would go to waste [http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/postmindestlohn16.html ARD reports PIN Group to lay off 1000 workers (German)] ] ." In his 2007 Christmas address to the nation, German PresidentHorst Köhler described the introduction of theminimum wage in the postal sector as "risky", stating that "a minimum wage that can not be paid by competitive employers destroys jobs"Stuttgarter Zeitung, 29 December 2007 (German)] .The PIN Group CEO, Günter Thiel, resigned his position on 17 Dec 2007 after Axel Springer Publishing turned down his offer to buy its remaining 63.7% share in the company. His plan had been to continue to manage the company under his own finances [http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/artikel/204/148848/ Süddeutsche Zeitung reports resignation of PIN Group CEO (German)] ] .
On 29 December 2007 the delivery company saarriva, which is based in the German State of
Saarland and is partly owned by PIN Group filed for bankruptcy.On 23 January 2008 it was announced by Horst Piepenburg, the newly appointed chairman, that PIN would agree to pay its workers the newly defined minimum wage which had been set at €9.80 per hour. [ [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/;art271,2461730 tagesspiegel - Pin will doch Mindestlohn zahlen] - German, 23.01.2008]
Reports at the end of January 2008 stated that chairman Horst Piepenburg had entered discussions with American
holding s, including theBlackstone Group , Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) andAdvent International , [ [http://www.ftd.de/unternehmen/handel_dienstleister/308753.html FTD - Pin-Group issues insolvency application (German)27.01.2008] ] although the company subsequently denied the claim. [ [http://de.reuters.com/article/companiesNews/idDEKOE84560420080128 Reuters (German] ]"Green post"
The PIN Group uses the colour
green to differentiate itself fromDeutsche Post , the postal services company formerly run as a monopoly by the German state, whose post boxes and delivery vans are in a distinctive yellow. Postal workers announce their arrival with the words [translated] "PIN, green post".Deutsche Post AG took legal steps to prevent this but lost the case in 2005 when the Hamburg state court ruled that this did not cause confusion with regard to the term "post" [http://www.aufrecht.de/4341.html Hanseatic state court, 23 Aug 2005] ] .The PIN Group sees itself as the leading alternative provider of postal services in Germany, preparing itself for the abolition of Deutsche Post's exclusive right to deliver letters under 50 grams, which ran out on 1 January 2008 [http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/aug2007/gb2007082_647870.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe+index+page_top+stories Businessweek.com 2 Aug 2007] ] .
Critics
A number of
trade union s and employee representatives have protested at the treatment and employment terms of PIN staff claiming that the company can only undercutDeutsche Post postal charges by hiring cheap workers on salaries just above theminimum wage . The PIN Group has argued that, unlike arch-rival Deutsche Post, it is obliged to payvalue-added tax [http://www.labournet.de/branchen/dienstleistung/tw/sonstige/pinhuck.html Kirsten Huckenbeck: PIN AG – Prekarisierung (nicht nur) im Norden ] ] .In February 2007, leading German trade union
Ver.di announced plans to negotiate a tarif agreement under regular arbitration with the company.In November 2007, with the impending advent of privatisation raising awareness of the issue, a number of areas of the media - led by newspapers belonging to leading shareholder
Axel Springer - condemned moves by politicians and the unions to introduce aminimum wage for postal workers [http://www.polaronline.de/article.php3?id_article=704 polaronline.de - Das studentische Online-Magazin an der Freien Universität Berlin ] ] .hareholdings
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