Porterbrook is one of the three major ROSCOs in the United Kingdom . It owns around a third of passenger railway locomotives, multiple units and coaching stock running on Network Rail's system which it leases to various train operators. Since 1996 Porterbrook has spent more than £1.5bn on new rolling stock in the UK and also leases to freight companies Freightliner, GBRf and DB Schenker. It also expanded to hire locomotives and stock on the European Continent, however the European operations were sold to CBrail in 2004. Porterbrook was created in 1994 as part of the privatisation of... British Rail. In January 1996 it was sold in a management-employee buyout, and then in August 1996 it was bought by Stagecoach Group. In 2000 Stagecoach sold it on to Abbey National bank for £1.4bn. On Grupo Santander's takeover of the Abbey, ownership of Porterbrook passed to the Spanish bank. On 27 October 2008 Porterbrook announced that Abbey had reached an agreement to sell the company to a consortium of Deutsche Bank, Lloyds TSB and BNP Paribas. The transaction was valued at £2 billion.
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