Norbert Dentressangle's (ND) announcement that it wants to buy Christian Salvesen for £254m has astonished analysts, who say the French logistics company is paying well over the odds for the firm.
Questions now hang over how ND will squeeze profitability out of a merger deal that values Salvesen at three times more than it was worth just a few months ago, and also its impact on the market in general.
ND's bid comes hot on the heels of Eddie Stobart's revelation that it is moving into multi-modal operations following a reverse takeover deal with Westbury Property Fund. Both are very different deals, but Chris Morgan at analyst Datamonitor says it is evidence that finding success in 
today's logistics market is not clear cut.
"There's no clear winning strategy for road transportation," he says. "No one can say that the way to go is road, rail or sea. People are still feeling their way around and following their own strategy."
Morgan says the deal will be welcomed by competitors fighting within a heavily fragmented market. He thinks the acquisition is probably driven more by what ND's customers want: more trucks and facilities to transport more of the same products, rather than any new business the French company bids for.
Morgan thinks ND paid over the odds in order to prevent a bidding war, but it has still shocked others.
Thomas Cullen, analyst at Transport Intelligence, says: "The Salvesen family must be cock-a-hoop, but for the ND investors, you would think they might have some sleepless nights. It's always a question in a takeover bid: have we paid too much? There's 
a huge sword of Damocles hanging over it."
He adds: "Frankly, anyone would be mad not to take this deal. It's jaw-dropping."
Cullen says the impact on the wider market will be minimal because the deal still doesn't propel the two merged companies into multinational status, and therefore allows medium-sized outfits to exploit any openings created. "ND is bold and ambitious, but it isn't going to turn into a vast corporation overnight. It's effectively a family-owned company it's not big enough to be vast and impersonal," he says.
But this is not a view shared by international logistics operator Davies Turner. Joint MD Philip Stephenson says ND's acquisition and Stobart's sale are good news. "It's provided us with an opportunity. Our approach to customers, whether big or small, is that we think very carefully about what they need and we provide that service. If you are really big, and if I'm going to be mean, I would say it becomes 'one size fits all'," he says.
Stephenson is optimistic about the future of the market for firms of this size. "These very big companies will go on their own way, but I am quite sure they will leave a big opening in the market for people with the determination to build their own businesses," he says. "I am still quite sure that people still want to run their own businesses, rather than be a part of a multinational, which is a little less personal."