On 22 Feb, 17:39, "Lüko Willms" wrote:
Am Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:54:11 UTC, schrieb Mizter T
auf uk.railway :

All that said, it seems likely that DB is keen on working with
Eurostar as opposed to running competing services, so much of this
talk is probably just hypothetical.

They might think to have a chance to buy EUKL when it is put up for
sale, or at least a controlling majority. Maybe by merging with
National Express...

Cheers,
L.W.


As you know, London and Continental Railways (LCR) is about to be
broken up into three parts - EUKL, HS1 and property interests.

National Express Group plc (NXG) has a 20.94% stake in LCR. It might
also be worth noting that SNCF owns 13.6% of LCR.

When LCR gets broken up I don't know whether NXG or SNCF will be able
to influence the situation with regards to who ends up with ownership
of EUKL - involvement of the UK government makes this whole thing more
complex.

However I'm pretty sure I'm right in saying that NXG loses money as a
result of it's involvement in LCR - because EUKL is loss-making, and
EUKL is a wholly owned subsidiary of LCR.

I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that when LCR gets broken up, NXG
simply sell up and walk away.

I'll be honest and say that I still haven't quite got my head round
the relationship between the government and LCR, apart from the fact
that LCR owes lots of money and the government has guaranteed a large
part of those loans to LCR (i.e. the lenders are as sure of getting
the money they lent to LCR back as if they had lent the government
itself the money).


The precise figures regarding LCR shareholders are taken from a
National Audit Office report, "Progress on the Channel Tunnel Rail
Link", published in July 2005. I don't think the shareholdings have
changed since then, not least because LCR is a privately held company
rather than one listed on the stock exchange hence shares don't change
hands overnight.

See the footnotes on page 9 (PDF page 10) of the report:
http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/n...-06/050677.pdf


Of course InterCapital and Regional Rail Ltd (ICRRL) is contracted by
EUKL to run Eurostar's UK operations until 2010 - and NXG own 40% of
ICRRL. But this in itself does not confer any ownership rights over
EUKL to NXG. Indeed, it might simply mean that NXG is even more
acutely aware of the fact that the Eurostar operation is loss making.