These plans would need to be made under various assumptions regarding the attitude of the present owners from the mildly uncooperative to the downright obstructive. The contingency plans would also include machinery to set up at: short notice a franchised bus company additional to CMB with a package of routes as proposed in paragraph 7(e) of memorandum XCC(79)86 (Annex A). If the Government was not satisfied within the near future that negotiations with CMB were going to be fruitful or the Company failed to carry out any agreements which were reached, it would be proposed that this alternative operator approach should be adopted. If this also failed to stimulate CMB into effecting the necessary improvements then the Govern- ment might eventually be forced into revoking the Company's franchise and taking over its assets and awarding a franchise or franchises to other operators.
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An alternative solution might be to encourage a voluntary take-over of CMB by another operator. But this is not thought likely to be acceptable to the present owners. Also a contested take-over is not likely to be feasible because most of CMB's shares are owned by two families who control the Company.
1.
Areas for Improving the Performance of CMB
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origolavor
The doubts surrounding the pursuit of option (b) mean that it is still important to try to influence the present owners to improve their performance. The first
The first and key need is for the Company to operate more buses than it has hitherto been readily prepared to put on the road. Lengthy bus queues, frequently broken-down buses and over-crowding all derive from a funda- mental faliure of the Company to plan ahead to acquire new buses systematically, both to add to the fleet and to reduce its age. Accordingly, the first area for improving the Company's performance is in its forward planning and ordering of buses and, as an important sub-area, of spare parts which at present are not systematically ordered.
CONFIDENTIAL #2