A shortage of liquidity has meant that financing for one of
Britain’s largest ever rail projects, the Intercity Express
Programme (IEP), will be sourced through five or six tranches of
debt-raising rather than through one or two lump sum payments as
had been originally planned, Leasing Life has learnt.
Alistair Dormer, the CEO of Agility Trains, the consortium
building and financing the £7.5 billion (€8.2 billion) IEP project,
said a lack of cash in the capital markets was the reason for
staggering the fundraising programme.
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He said: “Fundamentally, a lack of liquidity in the capital
markets has caused this. And also the view that we want to get
something that is deliverable. If you ask for too much money, at
the moment it just isn’t there.”
While the delivery of the first batch of trains is likely to
take place one year late – in 2014 rather than 2013 as was
originally planned – Dormer said this was due to delays in the
government’s railway electrification programme rather than the
funding shortage.
Following a Network Rail report published in June calling for
the laying of more overhead electric wires and electric lines, the
Department for Transport is looking to electrify the Great Western
Main Line, the route on which many of the IEP trains are due to
run.
A full report on the IEP will appear in the November issue
of Leasing Life.
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