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Leasing of rolling stock for franchised passenger services

7 August 2008
ORR/25/08

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) today welcomed the publication by the Competition Commission (CC) of its provisional findings in its investigation of the leasing of rolling stock for franchised passenger services.

Bill Emery, chief executive of ORR, said:

“We welcome the publication of the Competition Commission’s provisional findings and will read its report with interest. We note that the CC’s findings have agreed with a lot of the views that we put forward and that led to our reference to them. 

“As the competition authority for the railways we look forward to working with others to explore thoroughly the proposed remedies to deal with the issues raised.  We want to create an environment for a more competitive rolling stock market for the benefit of passengers and taxpayers”.

Notes to editors

  1. ORR received a complaint under the Enterprise Act 2002  from the DfT on 28 June 2006 asking that it consider whether there were grounds for it to refer the market for rolling stock to the Competition Commission for a market investigation.
  2. ORR commenced a market study on 7 July 2006 and announced on 26 April 2007 that it would refer the issue to the Competition Commission for further investigation.
  3. Under Section 131 of EA02, ORR may make a market investigation reference to the CC where it has reasonable grounds for suspecting that any feature, or combination of features, of a market in the United Kingdom for goods or services, prevents, restricts or distorts competition in connection with the supply or acquisition of any goods or services in the United Kingdom or a part of the United Kingdom.
  4. The three principal passenger rolling stock leasing companies are:
    i) Porterbrook Leasing Company Limited
    ii) HSBC (Rail) UK Limited
    iii) Angel Trains Limited
  5. The decision document ‘Review of passenger rolling stock leasing markets’ is available from the ORR website at http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/325.pdf
  6. The Competition Commision press notice is available from their website at http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/press_rel/2008/aug/pdf/22-08.pdf

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