History
In 1972 the state-owned the National Bus Company decided to bring together the scheduled coach services operated by its' bus operating companies under one brand. Initially branded as National, the National Express brand was first used in 1974. The National Express network was largely a branding exercise, with services continuing to be operated by the individual companies.
With the privatisation of the National Bus Company in the 1980s, National Express was subject to a management buyout in March 1988. The management team began to diversify, and acquired the bus company Crosville Wales in 1989 but its financial performance began to deteriorate from early 1990. A new management team took over the company in July 1991, with the backing of development and venture capital investors. The new team refocused the group on its core activities and sold Crosville Wales to British Bus Limited. In October 1991 it purchased Speedlink, an operator of coach services between Gatwick Airport and Heathrow Airport. In December 1992 National Express Group plc was floated on the London Stock Exchange. The prospectus stated the objectives of the company were to refocus and improve the profitability of the core coach business, to develop new products and services within its existing operations, and to acquire new businesses in the passenger transport market.
Read more about this topic: National Express Group
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)