Railtrack liquidators' £380 an hour
RAILTRACK Group liquidators Deloitte & Touche are charging £380 an hour for their services. Their costs so far for the 14-month liquidation have reached £1.13m.
Spread over the 2,976 hours spent by its staff, this comes to a remarkable £380 per hour - or £6.33 per minute.
And shareholders in the company, renamed RT Group, have many hours more to wait - until the second quarter of 2004 - for a further payout.
If joint liquidator Jamie Smith can resolve tax issues worth 8p a share, the payout could be close to 17p, taking the total returned to 260p, top of his target range. He has already repaid £2 a share in January and 43p in August.
Smith said: '£380 is an eyewatering figure but we have returned £1.3bn to investors at a cost of £1.1m, which is less than 0.1p in the pound. The negotiations were complex. I think shareholders have had a good deal.'
The 227,000 investors feared losing everything when Transport Secretary Stephen Byers pulled the plug on Railtrack, arguing that it cost taxpayers too much. It was replaced by Network Rail, which is costing them more.
Later the Hovernment backed down and allowed some assets to be retained by Railtrack investors.
Deloitte recovered £27m from a telecoms joint venture with Marconi, £63m from selling properties and has done better than some expected. Its charges will come under shareholders' scrutiny at a meeting on January 12.
Other fees include £739,000 to law firm Ashurst Morris Crisp, £1.25m to estate agent Jones Lang LaSalle, £1.5m to bankers at Lehman and £335,000 to law firm Bingham McCutchen.
