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The coach business will continue to bear the old name
Coach operator National Express is changing its holding company name to Mobico Group from early June.
The board believes that the Mobico name better reflects the group’s international nature and its diverse range of mobility services.
Its operating subsidiaries will retain their customer-facing brands and National Express, used by its coach services since 1974, will still be used in connection with the group’s UK national coach network and certain other businesses.
All significant brand names used across the group’s global operations including Alsa, WeDriveU, Peterman and Durham School Services will also be retained.
The FTSE-250 listed parent company, which runs bus, rail and coach services in countries including the US, France, Morocco and Bahrain, will adopt a new stock market ticker, “MCG”.
Ignacio Garat, National Express chief executive, said: “Whilst National Express is a highly valued consumer brand, Mobico better represents our multi-modal operations, global reach and future ambitions.”
How the new brand will play out among corporate and consumer groups is yet to be tested, but rebrands have had a mixed reception. Royal Mail was forced to ditch its Consignia rebranding in 2001, though it may have been preferable to the recent rebranding of the parent group as the International Distributions Services.
Sir Douglas Flint was again challenged at today’s AGM about the renaming of what was Standard Life Aberdeen as the phonetically-puzzling Abrdn.
He said there had been a number of jokes about it soon after the change two years ago, but claimed it was now accepted and had been a great success.
