The announcement made it sound anything but exciting: "BCD Travel today announced it has acquired Sweden and Norway-based corporate travel management company Ticket Biz."
A global agency buying a large regional player is in itself unremarkable.
But as the desire among TMCs to sell and consolidation in the sector grows (this announcement was on the same day that UK company Ickenham Travel announced the acquisition of Amity World Travel to merge with its own TMC, Business Travel Direct), it's probably worth considering how such a trend can affect travel buyers.
Big, international companies like doing business with other big, international companies — there tend to be both cultural and operational similarities. However, mergers of large players can also raise concerns about less competition, higher prices.
Many TMCs seek the business of smaller or 'mid-sized' companies, after all the margins are usually higher. And indeed, BCD was at pains to point out Ticket Biz's "focus on mid-market corporate customers" before it mentioned Ticket Biz's annual turnover of €180 (£130) million. Ticket Biz may have some small customers but it is not a small company.
But TMC size can potentially have greater consequences for corporates than a stronger position for BCD in the Nordic market, a market with a small number of big managed travel accounts in relation to the number of mid-sized ones.
This is because the needs and expectations of their TMCs by those that have responsibility for managed travel programmes is changing, and changing rapidly.
Booking functionality is increasingly automated and taken as a given. As the use of self-booking tools grows, TMC labour input and costs consequently fee income decrease as HRG's recent interim results demonstrated.
However, buyers increasingly seek specialist, value-add analytical services from their TMCs, especially those that require ever potent technology tools.
For buyers, the need to shift from treating suppliers and services and travellers as interchangeable commodities all offering the same product and all needing the same service is paramount. New distribution systems will respond to needs to greater personalisation. Bookers increasingly want the kind of modern, user-friendly experience that they encounter when booking leisure travel and which the OTAs increasingly offer. Suppliers have now unbundled their offerings and revenue management systems regularly alter pricing in line with changes in supply and demand.
Although the software as a service model is reducing the entry cost of many solutions dramatically there is no doubt that the large, leading TMCs need to invest in technology, and do so heavily and regularly, if they are to retain their market-leading positions.
Small business has always been able to compete by being nimble and able to respond to the individual needs of its distinct customers.
But modern business travel management companies have to rely on technology systems to do that, systems that require investment which many of their customers are reluctant to subsidise.
But size can enable a company to do this.
And that's one reason why consolidation is accelerating.