AIG group preferred bidder for Angel: sources
Written on February 19, 2008
A consortium including U.S. insurer American International Group Inc (AIG) is frontrunner to buy UK train operator Angel Trains from Royal Bank of Scotland for more than 3 billion pounds ($5.8 billion), said sources with knowledge of the situation on Tuesday.
AIG (AIG.N: Quote, Profile, Research), bidding with Australian infrastructure investor Babcock & Brown and Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), has been granted preferred bidder status after it and two other suitors made firm offers last month, the sources said.
Financial bidders such as AIG, Deutsche and Australia’s Macquarie are keen to invest in stable infrastructure-related companies because they seek investments with a regular cashflow they can use to pay interest on bonds.
“It (Angel) would be going from a bank to other financial institutions,” said Investec transport analyst John Lawson. “The bottom line is it’s stable cashflow and that makes it a straight financing decision for a potential financial buyer.”
Australian bank Macquarie (MBL.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) and British financier Guy Hands’s Terra Firma were the other bidders, people familiar with the matter had said on February 1.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L: Quote, Profile, Research), which has said it may sell the unit as it seeks to pay down debt and boost its capital ratios, announces full-year earnings in just over a week’s time.
The bank last year also sold its Southern Water utility to a group of infrastructure funds.
Angel Trains has more than 40 percent of the railway rolling stock leasing market in Britain and more than 5,300 vehicles across Europe fast cash payday loan. It was formed in 1994 from the privatization of British Rail.
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