With regret, I have this morning tendered my resignation as Chief Executive of Railtrack.

Government’s treatment of my company, and its shareholders, has been shoddy and unacceptable. Commitments, whether financial or otherwise, are made to be kept not broken.

Mr. Byers will learn that 40-year-old rails are broadly neutral on the public : private partnership debate. Either way, they need hard cash to replace them and soon. The needs of the rail network are huge and will not go away. It is a pity I have never had the opportunity to put this to him personally.

I will leave the industry with regret. Many are surprised to hear that it is full of bright and able people whose energies and initiative are constricted by intrusive and largely uncontrolled over-regulation. They deserve better and I hope they get it.

My last two years at Railtrack, the second as Chief Executive, have been a torrid but unique experience. In the aftermath of the post-Hatfield meltdown, we held our nerve under extreme pressure, stabilised the network and regained pride and focus on our engineering skills. In recent months real progress has been made – not least in improving infrastructure performance and accelerating TPWS roll-out which will save lives. It is an odd time for the state rug to be pulled from under us.

My priority for now is to support the company, its people and the administrator’s team and to realise any remaining value that we can for shareholders. I will expect to work my six-month period of notice and expect no special treatment whatsoever. I also plan to refrain from further public comment after today.

Further information
Prior to joining Railtrack, Steve Marshall was Group Chief Executive of Thorn plc, a retail and rental group with 18,000 people in 17 countries. He achieved a 70% uplift in the share price from the date of his appointment by improving its trading performance and restructuring operations, ultimately leading to a profitable series of disposals. He was previously Finance and Commercial Director.

Prior to that he was at Grand Metropolitan (now Diagio), latterly as European Finance Director of the Wines and Spirits business, and before that as Group Investor Relations Director for Grand Met.

His earlier career included various financial positions at Burton Group and BOC Group.

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Railnews Archive ::: 2001-10-08 RTK-001