First Group Disposals

[gilesbus1]

RE: First Group Disposals
In response to the idea that Wigan might be purchased by Rotala I will poor cold water on it now, Preston Bus was purchased by selling off all Preston Buses fleet to a Higher Purchase company and Rotala now lease the fleet back, unfortunayly the fleet that would go at Wigan is of no value or is PTE owned anyway, so insufficinet money would be generated to buy it out. Rotala do not have large cash reserves to make such a transaction unless the fleet was as in Preston's fleet relatively modern and could be leased back. So really the only optrion left for Wigan is a purchase by either Stagecoach or RATP, if they fail then basically the truck routes would move to other depots the local network would be abandoned and the relatively new depot at Bryn would close. The loca network would then probably to a viable level be registered by SLT or Wigan Buses or Wigan Coachways with small fleets of Optare Solo's or Dart MPD's.

Chester and Birkenhead are in a better possition as it is a much more substantial area with security being built up by partnerships with Arriva and therefore it might be possible to return the operations to a modest profit, therefore that might attract several external buyers.

The other option might be to sell all the Stagecoach as one package and for them to make what it might see as suitable adjustments.

Outside the area the article has got to the local press in Northampton, they spoke to Stagecoach who said they would be interested if the OFT wasn't interested but because the OFT is they will not be persuing with any offer but will watch the sale with interest to see what6 possition arrises, presumably if there is no offer they might register over the erntire network and bring the company to closure perhaps and then make a tojen bid for the depot building only.

This is my one concern with the OFT's possition being that any operator could register over the entire network making it cheaper and more able to take-over the operations without buying anything, that would lead to redundancies and the drop and downsizing of all these networks to merely commerrcially viable, therefore how can the OFT say it is in there interests to stop other buyers buying outright, or does it have a specific issue with FirstGroup making any money out of these sales considering that the previous Cheif Executiove Moir Lockhead was a prominent Labour Party backer.