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WMT goes for ESOP
Page 19
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• West Midlands Travel staff have made a formal bid to buy the company, following negotiations between union leaders and company directors.
"We are now formally asking the PTA to sell the company as a single unit to the management and employees," says managing director James Isaac, who believes an outside buyer would sell garages to make a quick profit.
The most likely form of buyout is an Employee Share Ownership Plan, an idea mooted in February during talks with the Department of Transport (CM 9-15 February). But before an ESOP can go ahead, West Midlands PTA chairman Phil Bateman must persuade the Government not to carry out its declared policy of splitting WMT up.
A report commissioned by the PTA from consultants Peat Marwick McLintock concluded that any division would cost nearly 24 million and lead to vastly increased overheads (CM 4-10 May). This evidence has been presented to MPs and peers as well as the DTp: "As yet there has been no response from the Government as to what it intends to do," says the company. "We have asked the PTA to inform the Secretary of State about the buyout plan.
WMT, with 1,800 buses operating in Birmingham, the Black Country, Coventry and Solihull, is a big operation which makes big profits — over £17 million in the 18 months following deregulation. Bateman sees the buyout scheme as "a major step" and concludes: "In the light of Government policy it makes a lot of sense for people who are earning their living from the company to be in charge of their own destiny."