New delay in Rosco privatization
The tug-of-war over the future of railway carriage maintenance company Rosco continues between state sell-off fund TAIPED and the Italian-owned railway service firm Trainose.
The submission of the improved binding bid for Rosco, scheduled for Thursday, has been postponed for another couple of weeks, to April 26, highlighting the difficulty of the project.
The original binding offer submitted by Trainose falls considerably below the valuations submitted by TAIPED’s two independent consultants. Sources say that the company controlled by Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane submitted an offer of 8.5 million euros, while the two independent surveyors – Grand Thornton and KPMG – submitted estimates of 18.8 million and 23 million euros respectively.
Consequently TAIPED is, according to the process being followed, unable to concede the carriage maintenance company at a price below the average of the two advisers, which comes to 20.75 million euros.
Small as this amount may seem in view of the 2 billion euros the Italian company has at its disposal, there is some doubt as to whether it will be placed on the table given that it is 1.4 times higher than the original offer, indicating that the Italians are trying to obtain Rosco at a particularly low price.
