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SMALL BUSINESS
National Express loses another franchise
AP
LONDON -Struggling transport operator National Express PLC will be stripped of an eastern England rail franchise three years early, the government said Wednesday.
National Express, which was the subject of takeover bids in recent months, said it was surprised, but not disappointed, by the government's decision.
The company will lose the East Anglia franchise on March 31, 2011, after defaulting this year on another major franchise, the East Coast Main Line.
Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis said the process for securing a new operator would start immediately to ensure a smooth transition for the service.
Earlier this week, the government also announced a bidding timetable for National Express' remaining rail franchise, which will change hands in May 2011.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said the moves underlined the "continuing chaos of rail privatization which is riddled with instability, uncertainty and crisis management."
"The sooner they and the rest of the money-grabbing train companies are kicked off our tracks for good, the better," Crow said.
National Express said that while the East Anglia decision was expected, the company was "disappointed given the excellent improvement in performance delivered by the group over the past five-and-a-half years of operating the franchise."
National Express — which also operates school bus services in 27 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, and is the leading private bus operator in Spain — is due to ask shareholders Friday to approve a 360 million pound ($603 million) rights issue to reduce its 1.1 billion pound debt burden.
The company is going ahead despite the objections of one of its directors, Jorge Cosmen, whose family holds an 18.5 percent stake. Cosmen earlier had joined with CVC Capital Partners Ltd. to explore a takeover bid for National Express, but announced last month that it would not make one.
After the Cosmen takeover approach fell through, National Express invited its British competitor, Stagecoach Group PLC, to make a bid but broke off talks, saying it was not possible to wrap up a deal by the end of the year.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
2009-11-26 06:01:08
COMMENTS ( 1 )
I never claimed the climate wasn’t changing. If you reread my posts, and pay attention this time, you will note that I never made such an absurd claim.
The fact remains that the very lynchpin of your AGW religion is the incongruous and incorrect contention that rising man-made CO2 levels are causing AGW. You both either “don’t know” basic geology or you are both “conveniently forgetting” that CO2 levels have been MANY times greater than now without raising global temperatures.
To correct another of your superstitions, in your global warming religion, the CRU wields impressive influence:
--- The CRU claims to have the world's largest temperature data set.
--- CRU data and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report.
--- The Environmental Protection Agency states that it "relies on most heavily" on that CRU report when it concluded that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.