Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and Hermes were today announced as the winning bidders for the UK government’s 40% stake in Eurostar International Limited.
It is intended that CDPQ will own 30% of Eurostar whilst Hermes will own 10%. The transaction is expected to complete in Q2 2015. The other existing owners of Eurostar are the French state owned railway company SNCF, which has a 55% stake, and the Belgian state owned railway company SNCB, which has a 5% stake.
Eurostar operates high speed passenger train services through the Channel Tunnel between London, Paris and Brussels, and carried 10.4 million passengers in 2014.
In connection with this project, Operis were pleased to undertake an audit of the financial model used to price the CDPQ and Hermes bid prior to bid submission.
