Partner Article

£765m bid for East Coast operator

The largest shareholder in National Express has made a £765m takeover offer for the transport group.

Spain’s Cosmen family owns an 18.5% stake, and has joined with private equity firm CVC to offer 500p a share, up from an earlier bid of 450p.

Rival Stagecoach also said it had agreed in principle to buy National Express’s bus and rail operations from the consortium if a deal went through.

In the wake of the announcement, National Express’s shares surged 13.8% to 469p, the biggest gain since May.

The CVC-Cosmen consortium said its latest offer was final, and would be withdrawn if not recommended by the board of National Express.

The offer follows recent turmoil at National Express, which lost the rights to the East Coast route this year.

In July, the government said it would take the route back into public ownership after National Express lost about £20m in the first half of the year and suffers from falling passenger numbers.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .