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Porterbrook's £80m dividend fuels calls for rolling stock to be nationalised
The Guardian
|October 15, 2024
The rolling stock firm Porterbrook paid out £80m in dividends to its mainly overseas shareholders last year, accounts show, fuelling further calls for Britain's trains to be nationalised.
The firm's train leasing arm made profits of £144m in 2023, when the railway was still beset by strikes over frozen pay and passengers faced widespread cancellations and fare rises of almost 6%.
Unions described the figures as "shocking but unsurprising", after years of Porterbrook and other rolling stock firms continuing to pay out large dividends to shareholders despite the downturn in the wider rail industry's revenues.
The pay of Porterbrook's chief executive, Mary Grant, rose to almost £1.4m - more than double that of the chief executive of Network Rail.
This story is from the October 15, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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