The train now standing at platform 1 belongs to Japan
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Britain, the nation that gave railways to the world, is to sell a third of its locomotives and rolling stock to the Japanese and Americans. Nomura, Japan's biggest securities firm, is poised to buy one of British Rail's three rolling stock leasing companies, known as Roscos, in partnership with Babcock & Brown, a US financing company.
It is believed the two have been successful in their joint bid for Angel Trains, one of three similar companies the government has put up for sale through Hambros, the merchant bank.
The three companies between them own British Rail's entire fleet of passenger trains and lease them to the train operating companies that run the services. The Roscos are responsible for part of the maintenance as well.
The leasing companies will be the first big British Rail operation to be privatised, with the government hoping to raise as much as pounds 1.7bn for the three companies, dwarfing the pounds 100m proceeds so far from selling other much smaller parts of British Rail.
With City estimates of the value of the high profile privatisation of Railtrack next spring plummeting to below pounds 2bn, the Government has regarded the sale of the Roscos as the main milestone to pass in proving that it can successfully sell the railways.
The other two Roscos, called Eversholt and Porterbrook, are expected to go to management buyouts. The Eversholt management has been backed by a British venture capital company, Candover, while Porterbrook's bid has been backed by Charterhouse, the merchant bank. The Government argues that the cheapest way to finance investment in new trains will be to open up the business to an injection of international capital, which will also introduce new and cheaper financing techniques.
A large number of airlines already operate almost entirely through leasing rather than purchasing of aircraft, and the same theory is now being applied to the railways. - a far cry from the days of steam when locomotives were mostly built by the companies that owned them.
The difference is that aircraft leases do not usually include maintenance responsibilities, but these will be the case with the railways.
The Roscos have eight to ten year leasing contracts with the train operators that guarantee them income from the existing mainly old rolling stock that they will be taking over. But they will be free to charge more for leases on any new rolling stock they supply to the train operators.
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