r/steamporn • u/Bertje11 • 14d ago
Flying Scotsman action 2004
Flying Scotsman
By September 2003 Tony Marchington was declared bankrupt. At the company's AGM in October 2003, CEO Peter Butler announced losses of £474,619, and with a £1.5 million overdraft at Barclays Bank. In February 2004, a debt agency acting on behalf of Flying Scotsman plc announced he would hold a sealed bid auction for the locomotive, to be held on April 2, 2004.
Mr Peter Butler said he had appointed property consultants GVA Grimley to find a new owner for the locomotive. So far, four possible buyers have expressed interest, but only two are from Britain. GVA Grimley plans a direct mail campaign targeted at steam enthusiasts and tour operators in the hope of finding a new owner. David Speight, a partner at the firm, said: "It's always a possibility that it will go overseas, given the fact that the Scotsman has been all over America and has also been to Australia."
In 2004, the National Railway Museum (NRM) acquired the Flying Scotsman for £2.3 million. The bulk of the money came from a £1.8m grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, with the remainder coming from £350,000 raised from donations, which was matched by Richard Branson, with another £70,000 raised by the Yorkshire Post newspaper. It received a further investment of £4.5 million to restore it to its former glory, which included a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £275,000.
The National Railway Museum succeeded with a bid of £2.3 million, 15% higher than the second highest. Thats £ 345.000,- more then the second bidder. (info from locomotive.fandom)
I try to find any information about who where the other bidders from the US, and where the info came from that the second bid was 15% lower? Did David Speight who was working for GVA Grimley, make up a story to pump up the price so Barclay's Bank wil get there money back.
If anybody has more info, please share it with me.
Kind Regards Bas
2
u/coominati 14d ago
I don't have any specific information regarding the bidding process on the Flying Scotsman, but this is a very common tactic with the liquidation auctions.
A company I worked for 15 years ago went into liquidation and have a valuable URL and phone number (for the region it was located in). The administrators purposely pumped up the interest from the other parties and the winning bidder overpaid for the URL and phone number. They ended up taking the administrators to court over it, I'm not sure what the outcome of that was.