DB and its chief executive
The man who has now taken over as chief executive has been a long-term employee of DB. Richard Lutz was in charge of Finance and Controlling from 2010, and before that Corporate Controlling. Arriva and DB Schenker Logistics came under his department from 2015.
Lutz joined DB in 1994, the year it was created from its two state railway predecessors - Deutsche Bundesbahn and Deutsche Reichsbahn. The two organisations were part of the legacy of Germany’s decades-long post-war split, with the Bundesbahn serving the West and the Reichsbahn the East.
Creating the new DB not only brought the two organisations together, it was also part of a much wider reform that did away with the classic state railway structures and replaced them with a new ‘private’ company, albeit one that was 100% state owned.
The official abbreviation of the company is ‘DB AG’ - the ‘AG’ stands for
Aktiengesellschaft, a company with shares.
In addition to creating the new organisation, the reforms opened the network to private companies and devolved the responsibility for local passenger services to Germany’s regional states (from 1996). These could now order services from either DB or the new private suppliers, while the tracks themselves became the responsibility of DB Netz.
The DB Group “operates the biggest rail network in the heart of Europe”, with more than 33,000km (20,500 miles) and 5,700 stations (source: DB’s Road Show Asia 2016) - a ‘closed financing circle’ meaning that all infrastructure profits go back into the infrastructure. DB reports that in Germany it has more than 99% of the long-distance market share, 71% of regional travel, and 61% of cargo.
Altogether, DB considers itself the ‘number two’ in the European passenger market - with 4.3 billion passengers in 2015 (2.25 billion on rail).
Since its formation, DB has expanded its activities overseas, and overseen the development of a high-speed network at home. The first ICE units formally went into passenger service under its predecessor the Deutsche Bundesbahn in 1991.
Revenue is reportedly roughly half and half rail/non-rail, and 60% from within Germany. Overseas, DB operates in more than 130 countries. In the UK, DB calculated Arriva’s share of the market at around 22% following the Department for Transport’s decision to award it the Northern franchise in December 2015. That puts it slightly behind Govia (24%) and Stagecoach (23%).
DB’s headquarters is in Berlin, in the metal and glass ‘Bahntower’ on Potsdamer Platz in what used to be part of the city’s ‘no man’s land’.
Richard Lutz’s predecessor as chief executive, Rüdiger Grube, had been in place since 2009.