'strictly business'
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by H. Brian Coffee
N0 MINISTERIAL plot to buy up bus companies is involved in last week's £.1.9m bid by the Transport Holding Company for the 430-vehicle West Riding Automobile Co. Ltd. It is a commercially inspired acquisition which THC has long been hoping to make.
And although the whole future structure of the bus industry happens to be in the melting pot, THC already has about £85m tied up in p.s.v. operation—so one company more or less does not affect the outcome of any major upheaval in the near future.
THC and West Riding (the Wakefieldbased company which championed the unconventional Guy Wulfnmian) have agreed on the terms of the takeover. THC has offered 31s for each West Riding 20s stock unit and 20s for each of the company's six per cent cumulative preference shares. Ordinary stock issued totals £1,079,448, and there are 231,305 preference shares. The bid puts a value of £1.9m on West Riding, whose ordinary shares stood at 26s before disclosure of the bid and are now standing at 30s.
THC intends to absorb West Riding into the State-owned Tilling Group but will retain the WR management. Adjoining West Riding's territory is that of THC's West Yorkshire Road Car Co. Ltd., and both operate into Leeds.
West Yorkshire and Leeds Corporation Transport are negotiating a co-ordination plan for services in the area—and West Riding could be fitted into this.
West Riding Automobile Company's directors are accepting the THC offer and advising other shareholders to do likewise.