“If I went in to our board at the moment with a proposition for UK rail, they should shoot me,” he said when asked if National Express would look at train franchises again after getting out of the market 18 months ago with the sale of C2C, the south Essex franchise.
“Timetable screw-ups, having to manage [the relationship with] Network Rail, dissatisfied customers . . . I have much better things to do with my time than deal with UK rail.
“It is tarnished. It is very risky for little commercial return. The reputational risk to my organisation far outweighs the commercial reward.”
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National Express was Britain’s largest post-privatisation train operator 15 years ago, but that began to seriously unravel when in 2009 it became the second of three companies to be sacked from running the east coast main line into and out of London King’s Cross, leading to the departure of Richard Bowker, Mr Finch’s predecessor.
National Express yesterday reported half-year pre-tax profits up 13 per cent at £100 million on revenues 3 per cent higher at £1.2 billion and a 10 per cent rise in the interim dividend to 4.69p. The figures show that the UK, where it employs 6,900 people and operates 2,400 vehicles in the eponymous coach company and buses in the West Midlands, accounts for just a quarter of the group.
In Spain it operates a third of the buses and coaches. Alongside operations in Morocco that total 2,700 vehicles, on which it employs 8,500 people, Spain makes about a third more than the UK in revenues and profits and is growing at 7 per cent a year.
Nearly half the group’s revenues and profits come from the US, where it operates 24,000 vehicles, mainly yellow school buses, and employs 29,000 people. It is growing in the US by about 9 per cent.
In the UK growth is at less than 1 per cent although a strong period for the National Express coach business sent earnings in its domestic market up 21 per cent.
Asked whether he had any interest in the likely break-up of First Group, Mr Finch said he was under a “prohibition notice” from his board for such a deal. He said National Express might be interested in some of First’s UK bus operations but not the whole business.
Shares in National Express closed 22¼p higher at 421p, just shy of a new ten-year high.