Owned by I Squared Capital, a company registered in the tax-haven Cayman Islands.
Buses
In 1986, buses were deregulated (everywhere outside of London) and privatised.
70% of our buses in the UK are owned and run by the ‘Big 5’ bus companies:
Arriva: owned by I Squared Capital, a company registered in the tax-haven Cayman Islands.
First: Listed on the London Stock Exchange, mostly owned by institutional investors - global and UK based asset management firms.
Go-Ahead: Mostly owned by a consortium of Kinetic Holding (Australian bus company) and Globalvia Inversiones (Spanish Transport Infrastructure Company).
National Express: The parent company is now called Mobico. This is listed on the London Stock Exchange and also owned by US banks including JP Morgan and businessman Jorge Cosmen.
Stagecoach: Owned by DWS Infrastructure, itself mostly owned by Deutsche Bank.
Source: Common Wealth ‘All Aboard: Transforming Bus Services’, July 2021.
But Greater Manchester will soon re-regulate its buses, bringing them under public control. Other city regions are likely to do the same (West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Liverpool, Cambridgeshire, Birmingham).
And 10 municipal bus companies, owned by their area's local councils, survived privatisation (Reading Buses, Nottingham City Transport, Blackpool Transport, Ipswich Buses, Warrington’s Own Buses, Lothian Buses in Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, Newport Bus, Cardiff Bus.)
Read more about why and how we need to bring buses into public ownership.
Read more about the Big 5 below:
