Richard Bowker, National Express and the Curse of Blair

Richard Bowker, currently (since 2006) Chief Executive of National Express Group, has a history of earning a tidy living job-hopping on the lucrative interface between the public and private sectors, sadly not always leaving the bathroom as he would wish to find it.  However, as a man who once played keyboards alongside the ex-Ugly Rumours axeman Tony Blair, he hasn't done too badly for himself over the last ten years.  His CV includes a stint at London Underground overseeing an early PFI for the Northern Line (which actually worked until Gordon Brown plonked the PPP on top of it), then at Virgin Trains where he was involved in the order of trains which were allegedly described by GNER's boss as

He left before the shit hit the fan at Virgin (in 2002) to become Chairman and (additionally) Chief Executive of New Labour's Strategic Rail Authority, just in time to rescue Virgin from bankruptcy with the help of wodges of public cash.  His subsequent stewardship of the SRA was so successful that it was abolished in the 2005 Railways Act (absorbed into Gordon Brown's empire at the Treasury annex known as the Department for Transport), and he was rewarded in August that year with the job of Chief Executive of Partnerships for Schools.  This body is charged with flogging lots (£40bn worth) of really expensive, inflexible and ugly PFI school schemes where it costs hundreds of pounds to bang up a noticeboard, and similar rubbish:

So strong and clear was his leadership that barely 13 months later he was off back into the private sector, to leading coach and rail operator National Express, as Chief Executive.

In 2005, five of the top seven TOCs on performance were run by National Express.  At the time of his appointment, NatEx still operated the following Train Operating Companies:

• c2c
• Gatwick Express
• Central Trains
• Midland Mainline
• one
• Silverlink

That's after losing a few franchises in the previous couple of years - a tendency that one might have expected would be reversed with the appointment of a politically well-connected and experienced Chief Executive a year or so ahead of some big shakeups in the franchise map.  It didn't quite pan out like that.  In the last few weeks some big announcements have been made so let's review that list:

• c2c - safe until 2011
• GatEx - DfT announced in April that it will be taken off NatEx in May 2008 and merged with Go-Via's Southern franchise.
• Central Trains - split between the new East and West Midlands franchises, which the DfT awarded this week
• Midland Mainline - absorbed into the East Midlands franchise
• one - safe until 2011
• Silverlink - split between the new Transport for London London Overground concession and West Midlands this week

So, with three of their six franchises up for grabs this week, who got tickets for the gravy train?

• East Midlands went to Stagecoach, who also run South West Trains and are the brains behind Virgin Rail.  Cool, professional, dispassionate so-and-sos.  NatEx qualified, but were unsuccessful
• West Midlands went to Go-Via, a partnership including the French company Keolis, part owned by SNCF, now definitely one of the big boys with the deal to do the Olympic specials in 2012 and this deal which puts them head-on with Virgin in one of the few areas where there's any real competition.  NatEx sat this one out.
• London Overground (which is a 'concession', not a franchise*) went to the highly regarded Chiltern operator Laing Rail with the even more highly regarded Hong Kong metro operator MTR finally getting a UK rail operation as equal partners.  NatEx bid, but were excluded from the final two back end of last year.

So, including in the loss of Gatwick Express, a big round 0 out of 4 for NatEx there since Richard Bowker became Chief Executive, with only the currently Virgin-run Cross Country (complete with cheap and nasty trains) and the re-re-let Intercity East Coast left to play for in the short term.  It might be worth watching where he goes next, particularly if you have shares in it.  National Express Group has been sharply down in recent weeks (although, to be fair, it outperformed the market for the first few months of his tenure) and from being the major player in the privatised railway industry they're now down to fourth behind First, Stagecoach and Go-Via.  All of which makes the final two franchise awards extremely interesting - Virgin, Arriva and NatEx are in the running for both, with First only going for the East Coast, having been evicted from the Cross-Country bidding last month.  The awards are in a few weeks time.

* The difference being that in a concession fares, trains available and service levels are explicitly set by the public sector and the private company has to meet them as best it can, as opposed to franchises where the public sector implicitly sets the service levels and the trains available and the operator gets blamed for raising fares to meet them - the West and East Midlands deals allow unregulated fares to go up about 50%.