The American private long-distance bus company Greyhound changes hands: the German group Flixmobility, which controls the Flixbus and Flixtrain brands in Europe, bought it for 172 million dollars (148 million euros) from the British group Firstgroup. A price of less than 150 million euros is low for a transport company spread throughout the United States, but the fact is that the Greyhound, which has already gone bankrupt a couple of times in the past, is again in serious difficulty, due to competition. of low cost operators such as Flixbus (and also of low cost planes) and aggravated by the coronavirus crisis.
Greyhound has a great tradition in the United States, where rail transport is inadequate and gives way to road transport; his buses appear in many films, from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” to “Tomorrowland – The world of tomorrow”. The company was founded in 1914, when the Great War broke out in Europe, and currently connects 2400 destinations in the US with 16 million passengers a year. As for Flixbus, it serves 2,500 destinations in 36 countries with 400,000 daily connections; its traffic is much higher than that of Greyhound: 62 million passengers in 2019 (last year economically normal, i.e. pre-Covid). The German group frames the operation in a “continuous growth strategy to build a global presence”