Limited company | |
Industry | Rail |
Founded | 1994 |
Headquarters | United Kingdom |
Key people
|
Paul Francis, Managing Director |
Products | |
Owner | Consortium of: Alberta Investment Management Corporation Allianz Capital Partners EDF Invest Hastings Fund Management |
Website | www |
Porterbrook is one of the three major (ROSCO) in the United Kingdom (the other two being Angel Trains and Eversholt Rail Group). It owns around a third of passenger railway locomotives, multiple units and coaching stock running on Network Rail's system which it leases to various train operators.
Since 1996, Porterbrook has spent more than £1.5bn on new rolling stock in the UK and also leases to freight companies Freightliner, GB Railfreight and DB Schenker. It also expanded to hire locomotives and stock on the European Continent, however the European operations were sold to CBrail in 2004.
The company has been owned since October 2014 by an international consortium comprising Alberta Investment Management Corporation, Allianz Capital Partners, EDF Invest and Hastings Fund Management.
Porterbrook was created in 1994 as part of the privatisation of British Rail. In January 1996 it was sold in a management-employee buyout, and then in August 1996 it was bought by Stagecoach Group. In 2000, Stagecoach sold it on to Abbey National bank for £1.4bn. On 27 October 2008, Porterbrook announced that Abbey had reached an agreement to sell the company to a consortium of Deutsche Bank, Lloyds TSB and Antin Infrastructure Partners. The transaction was valued at £2 billion.
In October 2014, Porterbrook Rail Finance was acquired by a consortium of infrastructure investors, including the alternative investment arm of German insurance group Allianz for a fee rumoured to be in the region of $3.2 billion.