Right now there are two owners First group and MTR, how they work ? Like both of them are sharing one office?
It's not two companies operating separate parts of the network. It's two companies who get together and set up a third company, called "First MTR South Western Trains Limited". The only job of that third company (the "Joint Venture") is to run SWR.
Lets say First Group own a few train companies, are they all together? like same HR for GWR and SWR or they are completely different businesses and people?
The default position is that each company will have their own HR departments.
However, they may choose to outsource parts of their business, which may be to their parent company or may be to totally independent companies.
Hypothetically:
- Drivers may be employed directly by First MTR South Western Trains Limited
- Their website might be built by First Websites Limited. SWR would pay a fee to First Websites, and First Websites would employ the web developers.
- Their trains might be maintained by MTR Train Maintenance Limited. SWR would pay a fee to MTR Train Maintenance Limited, who would ensure the trains were maintained according to contracted standards.
- Their trains might be cleaned by Serco. SWR would pay a fee to Serco, who would ensure the trains were cleaned to a contracted standard.
For each part of their business they can decide who they want to operate it, whether that's directly inside the joint venture (the drivers), outsourced to a sister company (website and engineering) or outsourced to an independent company (cleaning).
If I was working for GWR and I want to move to SWR would be completely new process or more like a transfer ?
Probably a completely new process. Even if both companies have outsourced HR to another company, they would still have separate staff databases and contracts. As others have mentioned they may share senior staff, and if something has worked for GWR then they might try to do the same on SWR, but the starting point is that they are separate companies.
in this example MTR own 30% are they managing this businesses or is only about money, if shares go up they make money if down they will lose?
Sort of.
First MTR South Western Trains Limited isn't listed on the stock market, so neither company can choose to sell shares to general investors. Even if it did, the company only have a contract to run the trains until April 2023, at which point you have a load of staff employed, but no trains for them to work on. That's not a company that many people would be interested in buying - so it's not about the price that you can sell the shares / company.
Instead it's about the money that you have make while you are running the company. If First MTR South Western Trains Limited make a profit, then they can choose to pass that profit on to their owners in the form of a dividend. First own 70% so they'll get 70% of the dividend. MTR will get the other 30%.
If different owners win the contract after 2023 then assets and staff will transfer to those new owners. I'm not sure exactly how that process works, but I don't think it's a big way of making money for the former owners.