First Manchester

[djb]

RE: First Manchester

(24/11/2018 16:29)Brickmill Wrote:  Looking back, I suspect they bought it partly because "they could". ie. Stagecoach certainly couldn't and I'm guessing Arriva either couldn't financially or were "warned off"by the CMA/OFT. The latter doesn't make much sense though as even then, they had a declining prescence in South Manchester, but it seemed strange that (allegedly) it was Arriva NOT Stagecoach that officially objected to the CMA/OFT about First buying Finglands. First for their part would say, "well, if we hadn't bought it, it would have closed down making 90 (iirc) people redundant and handing a monopoly to Stagecoach anyway". The only other logical buyer would have been Bullocks, but they may have felt it was too much to take on and were happy with the security of running only contracted or otherwise supported services.

If it is true regards arriva, I wonder if their concern was first entering their patch in Trafford. If I remember rightly At the time of the sale, finglands were operating on the 19 in the daytime (and Doing relatively well loading wise).