This connection is barely understood by the working population. Out of some combination of ignorance, apathy, disdain and deference we clock the owner of a company, e. The truth is that if there are deep vaults, the money there flows in month after month from workers — shelf-stackers at Tesco, librarians at Herefordshire County Council, Ontarian park rangers, or dockworkers at ABP itself. None of this means that pension schemes are a force for good. They have an advantage in legal character over banks or insurance companies because their schemes are essentially non-commercial, not-for-profit organisations.
So pension funds could be a force for good. But there is much awry. Because their management is typically by trustees, ie part-timers, pension funds are weak. The City knows this and has become proficient at milking off a lot of pension fund capital, and hence influence, in the form of fees. On one side, millions of Thames Water customers paying an inflated private water tax.
A curmudgeonly Scottish portfolio manager, the kind of man who buys and sells stakes in water companies and ports - was asked if he thought a particular business deal was a win-win situation for both parties involved.
The audience laughed heartily but perhaps this man was being honest: when it comes to managing money, it is not possible for both sides to win. Three years ago a bunch of UK pension schemes tried to fight back against those clever middlemen, specifically in buying and selling infrastructure, by setting up an investment club, the Pension Infrastructure Platform.
Instead, the pension funds will end up owning long-running PFI-type contracts. PIP itself, which may have a handful of employees by this summer, is on course to look like a British pension fund itself, with a few well-meaning staff relying on the clever middlemen to handle the actual complexities of the deals.
These concatenations, many of which exist to avoid tax, have caused plenty of embarrassing situations: Church of England vicars discovered their savings were backing Wonga, the loan shark. Dutch doctors found their pension was funding cluster bomb manufacturers. By the late s, the British government, under Labour leadership, was forced to consider privatizing a number of the government-controlled industries.
The country's docks were among the first to be eyed for privatization. This process took on still greater steam with the arrival of the Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, to power. The privatization movement caught up with the British Transport Docks Board at the beginning of the s. The newly created ABP was given control of 19 of the country's ports, including a number of its largest ports, such as Southampton and Cardiff.
ABPH, led by Sir Keith Stuart as chairman, started strongly and by was able to make the first of a series of one-for-one scrip issues. The new subsidiary, renamed Grosvenor Waterside Group, gave ABPH an entry into the properties market, with a particular interest in the unused properties around the ports under the company's control.
ABPH's part of the joint-venture was 49 percent. Despite such success during the s, the company's profits remained under heavy pressure, particularly because of the payroll guarantees of the Dock Labour Scheme.
At the same time, new vehicles, machinery, and other equipment were providing the company's European continent competitors with more efficient, less labor intensive operations, which enabled these ports to undercut ABPH's prices. As ABPH reduced its payroll and modernized its facilities, the company's profits began to grow again. ABPH now operated ports and provided ports services and had diversified into tugboat and car ferry services, as well as into property acquisition and development.
This latter division was causing the company headaches, however, as the collapse of the British building market had left it with a large and underperforming portfolio. Yet ABPH was back in the black a year later. The company had been able to expand its portfolio of ports, after the Ports Privatization Act enabled it to acquire the ports in Whitby, Teignmouth, and Colchester.
The company was also redeveloping its property portfolio as the U. In , after appointing a new managing director, Andrew Smith, the company called in outside consultants for a strategic review. Accept analytics cookies Reject analytics cookies View cookies.
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