Canadian Pacific white paper makes case for industry consolidation

Canadian Pacific renewed its call for a merger with Norfolk Southern Corp. in a white paper released yesterday.

CP said its proposed $28 billion takeover of NS is necessary to increase capacity of North America's rail service to accommodate current and future economic growth.

Noting that increasing infrastructure to accommodate growth "has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible," CP said the solution to increasing efficiency of the overall network — especially in highly congested areas such as Chicago — lies in industry consolidation.

CP said its pursuit of a merger with NS would:
• enable far better utilization of existing infrastructure;
• introduce alternative options for re-routing traffic around areas of congestion;
• create new opportunities to generate the most efficient route for rail shipments;
• allow CP-NS to provide end-to-end service to customers, without hand-offs and interchanges, which improves safety; and
• improve overall service for shippers of all sizes across the network.

To read CP's entire white paper, click here.

NS, which has rejected all three of CP's merger offers, also released a white paper. Published in December 2015 and written by two former Surface Transportation Board (STB) commissioners, the paper takes the position that the board is highly unlikely to approve CP's acquisition proposal.