CSXT possibly being bought out in the not so far future?

Question

I read an article on Yahoo Reuters, that there is heavy speculation in the stock market that CSX may be bought out by another major U.S. railroad. This is just speculation, but the guys in the stocks said what is going on with CSX stocks, is a precursor to a possible buyout. Buyout by whom, nobody knows. Anybody know anything more about this?

Answer 1

Don't know anything about a buyout..but I worked for a company that had a spur that was serviced by CSXT...and they were atrotious, unreliable and their ee's were rude and obnoxious.  Therefore as far as I am concerned, if there is a buyout noone could be any worse.

Answer 2

I'll say this much- when Conrail was broken up between CSX and NS, back in '98, the government put in a moratorium that said the parts of Conrail could not be sold for at least 5 years.  It's been more than 5 years, so both NS and CSX may want to sell parts of this territory, but who can say...  Nowadays, the economy is getting better and rail is being used more and more, so I doubt that any major mergers or sales would be pending. I certainly haven't heard of any, but every few months a railroad magazine starts printing articles speculating about it, and it never seems to happen.

Answer 3

Any possibilities of a merger between the larger railroads would definitely make the news, and so far, nothing has gone beyond rumour stage.

Regulators are apprehensive about approving such a transaction these days, as the last few big mergers and buyouts didn't pan out like everyone had hoped.  There's a lot of powerful industrial, shipping, organized labour, and community groups that would line up well out the door to oppose such a thing.  Nothing this big would go unnoticed, and wouldn't happen without a fight.

There's a bidding process, shareholder approval, regulatory approval, and a whole bunch of sales pitches and presentations prior to anything like this happening.  If you even semi-regularly read the business pages, you'll know about this long before it's a done deal.

Answer 4

I don't know either, but if they were bought out, I would hope that it would be Norfolk Southern. I can't stand CSX, but I guess that is because I'm partial to NS because I'm going to be working there soon.