Railtrack
Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the track, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the stations of the British railway system from its formation in April 1994 until 2002. The Company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but on 3 October 2002, the main operating arm - the owner and operator of the national railway network, Railtrack PLC - was sold by its parent company Railtrack Group plc to "not for dividend" company Network Rail (a company limited by guarantee) and was later renamed Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd.
Railtrack Group plc was renamed RT Group plc and was dissolved on 22 June 2010.
History
Founding
Founded under Conservative legislation that privatised the railways, Railtrack took control of the railway infrastructure on 1 April 1994 and was floated on the Stock Exchange in May 1996.
The fatal accidents at Southall in 1997 and Ladbroke Grove in 1999 called into question the effect that the fragmentation of the railway network had had on both safety and maintenance procedures.
In February 1999 the Company launched a bond issue which caused a significant fall in the Company's share price.
Railtrack was severely criticised for both its performance in improving the railway infrastructure and for its safety record. Between its creation and late 1998, the company had a relatively calm relationship with its first economic regulator, John Swift QC, whose strategy was to encourage Railtrack to make commitments to improvement. But critics said that the regulator was not tough enough and that the company had, as a result, been able to abuse its monopoly position. In particular, its customers, the passenger and freight train operators, were desperate for regulatory action to force the company to improve its stewardship of the network and its performance. Swift had been appointed rail regulator in 1993 by the then Conservative transport secretary John MacGregor MP. When the Labour government took over after the general election in May 1997, the new transport secretary (and deputy prime minister) John Prescott took a much harder line. When Swift's five-year term of office expired on 30 November 1998, he was not reappointed. After an interim holding period, during which Chris Bolt, Swift's chief economic adviser and effective deputy, filled the regulator's position, in July 1999 a new rail regulator began a five-year term, and a new, much tougher regulatory era began.
The new rail regulator, Tom Winsor, had been Swift's general counsel (1993–95), and adopted a more interventionist and aggressive regulatory approach. At times the relationship was stormy, with Railtrack resisting pressure to improve its performance. In April 2000 it was reported in the Guardian that "Railtrack is adopting a deliberate 'culture of defiance' against the rail regulator". Gerald Corbett, Railtrack's chief executive at the time, and Winsor clearly saw things very differently to each other. Railtrack resisted regulatory action to improve its performance, and as the regulator probed ever more deeply, serious shortcomings in the company's stewardship of the network were revealed.
It was the Hatfield crash on 17 October 2000 that proved to be the defining moment in Railtrack's collapse. The subsequent major repairs undertaken across the whole British rail network are estimated to have cost in the order of £580 million. According to Christian Wolmar, author of On the Wrong Line, the Railtrack board panicked in the wake of Hatfield. Because most of the engineering skill of British Rail had been sold off into the maintenance and renewal companies, Railtrack had no idea how many Hatfields were waiting to happen, nor did they have any way of assessing the consequence of the speed restrictions they were ordering - restrictions that brought the railway network to all but a standstill.
Regulatory and customer pressure had been increasing, and the company's share price began to fall sharply as it became apparent that there were serious shortcomings in the company's ability to tackle and solve its greatest problems.
Meanwhile, the costs of modernising the West Coast Main Line were spiralling. In 2001, Railtrack announced that, despite making a pre-tax profits before exceptional expenses of £199m, the £733m of costs and compensation paid out over the Hatfield crash plunged Railtrack from profit to a loss of £534m. This caused it to approach the government for funding, which it then controversially used to pay a £137m dividend to its shareholders in May 2001.
Administration
Railtrack plc was placed into railway administration under the Railways Act 1993 on 7 October 2001, following an application to the High Court by the then Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers. This was effectively a form of bankruptcy protection that allowed the railway network to continue operating despite the financial problems of the operator. The parent company, Railtrack Group plc, was not put into administration and continued operating its other subsidiaries, which included property and telecommunications interests.
For most of the year in administration, the government's position had been that the new company would have to live within the existing regulatory settlement (£14.8 billion for the five years 2001-2006). However, it soon became obvious that that was impossible, and that the aftermath of the Hatfield crash had revealed that the network required significantly more money for its operation, maintenance and renewal. It was reported on 23 November 2001, that a further £3.5 billion may be needed to keep the national railway network running, a sum disputed by Ernst & Young, the administrators.
To get Railtrack out of administration, the government had to go back to the High Court and present evidence that the company was no longer insolvent. The principal reason given by the government to the court for this assertion was the decision of the rail regulator - announced on 22 September 2002 - to carry out an interim review of the company's finances, with the potential to advance significant additional sums to the company. The High Court accepted that the company was not therefore insolvent, and the railway administration order was discharged on 2 October 2002.
Transfer of assets to Network Rail
Network Rail was formed with the principal purpose of acquiring and owning Railtrack plc. Originally the Government allowed private companies to bid for Railtrack plc. However, with limited availability of financial data on Railtrack, the political implications of owning the company and the very obvious preference of the government that the national railway network should go to Network Rail, no bidders apart from Network Rail were forthcoming, and Network Rail bought Railtrack plc on 3 October 2002.
Network Rail's acquisition of Railtrack plc was welcomed at the time by groups that represented British train passengers. The attitude of Railtrack's customers - the passenger and freight train operators - was much more cautious, especially as they were wary of a corporate structure under which shareholders' equity was not at risk if the company's new management mis-managed its affairs.
Liquidation
Railtrack's parent company, Railtrack Group, was placed into members’ voluntary liquidation as RT Group on 18 October 2002. The Railtrack business (and its £7 billion debt) had been sold to Network Rail for £500 million, and the various diversified businesses it had created to seek to protect itself from the loss-making business of running a railway were disposed of to various buyers. £370 million held by Railtrack Group was frozen at the time the company went into administration and was earmarked to pay Railtrack shareholders an estimated 70p a share in compensation. The Group's interest in the partially built High Speed 1 line was also sold for £295m.