ComfortDelGro

Comfort Group Ltd

National Trades Union Congress Co-operative Commonwealth for Transport , was formed in 1970 as a social enterprise together with NTUC Income and NTUC Welcome. It targeted the problem of pirate or "ali baba" taxis which were rampant in Singapore at that time. Its business undertakings were acquired by Comfort Transportation Pte Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Comfort. Comfort was subsequently listed on 6 June 1994. As of its merger in 2003, its taxi business operated under the brand names of Comfort and Yellow Top with a combined fleet of approximately 11,340 taxis. It was Singapore's largest private bus operator then with 401 buses on unscheduled routes.

DelGro Corporation Limited

CityCab is DelGro group's taxi operations arm. CityCab started in 1995 with the merger of three companies – Singapore Airport Bus Service Ltd , Singapore Bus Service Taxi Pte Ltd and Singapore Commuter Pte Ltd. At the time of merger in 2003, DelGro group operated public bus services, taxis and car rental in Singapore, Malaysia, United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China. It ran 5,116 taxis while its listed subsidiary, SBS Transit was the largest scheduled bus operator with 2,872 buses. DelGro had also just been awarded the operation of the Northeast MRT line and the Sengkang/Punggol light rail system.

Merger

Comfort and DelGro's merger was first proposed on 21 November 2002. In its Joint Announcement, the merger aimed to "consolidate the transportation businesses of the Companies in order to enhance profitability and shareholder value. At the same time it will enable NewCo to provide better customer service through synergies and greater efficiencies and to achieve increased size and scale for its overseas operations." It would also be "better placed to face the increased competition from the liberalisation of the unscheduled feeder bus services market in Singapore."The merger had a market capitalisation of over $1 billion, combined sales of $1.56 billion, and pre-tax earnings of $196 million. It set to provide a spectrum of transport services ranging from bus and taxi services to leasing and vehicle maintenance and inspections.The merger's only rival then was SMRT Corporation, which had a market capitalisation of around $930 million, sales of $500 million and pre-tax profits of $88.5 million then. Its fleet of some 600 buses and 2,000 taxis was smaller, but it was operating Singapore's rail network entirely.