Would you buy a used franchise off this company?
I Squared is a private equity company, specialising in energy and water infrastructure projects, all over the Americas and parts of Asia. They buy, enhance, then sell, which doesn't follow the usual mosel for a
UK▸ rail franchise, but they may know what they are doing with it, and they certainly can handle money. I can't find an actual railway in the list of things they own, which is impressive, and includes a fifth of all power generation in Ireland. A few months ago, it raised $7 billion for a new infrastructure fund from institutional investors, so isn't short of cash for new projects. A managing partner said then:
“We currently see opportunities globally with attractive risk-adjusted returns across different sectors including energy, telecom, transport, and utilities in the US and Europe as well as in high-growth economies including India, China and Latin America.”
which doesn't sound to me like the Arriva we know and love.
A notable adviser was Boutros Boutros-Ghali, once top banana at the UN, where he was affectionately known as Boo-Boo.
Brookfield goes back more than a century, beginning as the São Paulo Tramway, Light and Power Company. It recently bought Oaktree Capital Management for about $4.7 billion, so has the vvehicle to make investments. While its transport investments, under a subsidiary, seem to be mainly toll roads, it bought an Australian port and rail operator in 2016, although much of the acquisition was moved on to other companies.
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