Insider Media Limited

Bus, coach and rail operator National Express has ambitions to expand its services throughout Europe, Insider has learnt. Jez Maiden, finance director at the Birmingham-based company, said that it “would like to expand across the borders”, and named France and Germany as potential targets for the business.

Maiden spoke to Insider following the company’s relocation of its headquarters from London to Digbeth, a move completed earlier this month.

Maiden, who also relocated from the capital, said: “The reasons for moving corporate headquarters to Digbeth were two-fold. Firstly, we wanted to put the management teams together, and secondly we felt we could be more cost effective. We now have access to this great talent pool in Birmingham, and have already recruited an additional 30 people.”

The company released its interim management statement earlier this week, detailing the activity of all five of the group’s services – UK bus, coach and rail, as well as the operations in Spain and North America.

Following the interim statement, which revealed that National Express had increased its operating profit by £5m for the third quarter of 2010, Maiden outlined the company’s five-year plan.

“We would like to invest in improved services and reduce operating costs – we have already closed one depot to help achieve this,” he said. “We are seeing improvement across all five businesses.”

Maiden also said that the company had ambitions to expand the National Express brand.

“We think there will be opportunities in Europe over the coming years,” he said. “We would like to expand across our borders, into countries like France and Germany. We’d really like to increase our European presence.

“I think firstly we’d look at European lines connecting to London.”

The company already operates in North America and in Spain, where it launched in 2005, and is now the market leader in bus services.

“The North America division is growing; we had a 5 per cent increase in the number of contracts we won over there in the last quarter,” said Maiden. “It’s too early to see how and when we will expand the business over there, but it is a very ‘repeatable’ model that we have over there which could be used in other regions.”