It has now been a year since Otto made it clear that it wanted to get rid of Hermes. In the company's spokesperson, it was then quite quickly retooled to a "strategic investor who fits the corporate culture in the long term". At the same time, Otto was even open to giving up its majority stake in Hermes.

However, this news quickly became very quiet again. There were no real updates or even binding statements from the Group. The pain and urgency will not have been great enough and high-profile bidders such as Amazon were excluded from the outset anyway. It is estimated that Hermes handles 98% of Otto's total parcel volume, so they don't want to bring the competition directly into their company. In addition, we estimate that not even that many interested parties have taken a look at the data room at Otto - and if they have, they have quickly turned it down.

There are now increasing signs that a decision to sell is imminent. Current analyses of the Otto company figures show us that Otto is focusing entirely on profitability, distributions to the owner family are reaching a new high - at the same time, losses have been incurred with Hermes and massive legacy burdens "on the last mile" demonstrate a lack of future viability.

In our opinion, there are only very few actual potential buyers left and the decision is imminent.

Why is this investor important for online retail?

In addition to the obvious importance for many online retailers due to existing contracts with Hermes, there is another strategic reason: after the structural deficits that Hermes has, especially on the last mile, which are increasingly coming to light, a collapse of the existing handling system is imminent.

Some large online retailers have already recognized for several years that at the end of the day it is about having sufficient capacity and fallback scenarios via various players on the last mile.

However, the majority of e-commerce companies are dependent on just one CEP service provider. Not only Hermes suffers from these structural deficits, other service providers have the same problems. With the investor, however, Hermes now has the opportunity to bring in a shareholder who can make its own business fit for the future with new approaches and a truly far-reaching restructuring of the delivery model. If instead an investor with a "business as usual" approach takes the helm, the spiral of crisis on the last mile could turn all the faster. We are curious!