One train can hide another.
A year after selling Ermewa, its freight car and tank car leasing subsidiary, to the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec (CDPQ), the SNCF is about to sell Akiem to it.
This other leasing activity, of locomotives this time, is held equally with DWS, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank.
The amount of the sale of Akiem would vary between 2.5 and 3 billion euros.
The CDPQ is a major institutional investor.
It manages the Quebec pension plan and several other public and parapublic pension and insurance plans in La Belle Province.
The SNCF knows him well.
He not only bought Ermewa together with DWS for more than 3 billion euros.
But the CDPQ also holds 30% of the capital of Keolis alongside the rail operator, which owns 70%.
It also holds 19.31% of the Eurostar group (Eurostar and Thalys).
It is finally the first shareholder of Alstom since the latter acquired Bombardier.
Read alsoSNCF in search of 100 billion to double rail traffic
Unsurprisingly, the SNCF group's objective is to reduce its debt, a commitment engraved in the 2018 railway reform law. Indeed, the State had then agreed to relieve the rail operator of 35 billion in debt (including 25 billion in 2020, then 10 billion in 2022) out of the 60 billion accumulated in 2019, provided that it reaches financial equilibrium from 2022.
Renovate the rail network
"
This planned sale of Akiem is fully in line with the SNCF group's strategy: to become a world leader in sustainable mobility for passengers and goods, with a core rail business and two strategic assets, Geodis (freight, editor's note) and Keolis (public transport)
, indicates Laurent Trevisani, director general strategy and finance of the rail operator.
This operation would allow, once the definitive agreements have been concluded, to participate in the financing of our core activities and the group's growth drivers, while accelerating its debt reduction.
» The two shareholders of Akiem (220 million turnover in 2021 and 150 million EBITDA) have launched a competitive bidding process and decided to
These asset disposals had been encouraged from 2020 by the executive, anxious to see the SNCF respect its part of the contract.
But, at the time of the energy transition, Jean-Pierre Farandou, the boss of the SNCF group, imagines financing needs on a completely different scale: "
My vision is to double the share of transport railway,
he said in mid-July
.
To ensure that 20% of passenger journeys are made by train, compared to 10% today.
»
Read alsoRailway equipment rental: Akiem buys Macquarie European Rail
Financially, this ambition, which also concerns rail freight, would be absolutely unprecedented: “
The order of magnitude is an investment of 100 billion euros over fifteen years.
The State could finance 50%.
The other 50 billion could be provided by local authorities, European funds and the SNCF, ready to devote part of its future profits to this vast project.
This would finance the upgrading of the aging rail network.
“
France devotes approximately 2.8 billion euros to the regeneration of the network per year.
It would take a good additional billion per year
, ”said Jean-Pierre Farandou.
The Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, answered him indirectly last Sunday, in the JDD.
He conceded that his budgetary priority was to increase the resources devoted to rail.
"
We are going to put in place, based on a program over several years, a precise assessment of needs and priorities to modernize our network,
. It would be dishonest to say that we can do high speed, regeneration, support for small lines at the same time, without sequencing or prioritizing
.
»
SEE ALSO
- The Italian company Trenitalia, rival of the SNCF, strengthens its Paris-Lyon offer