Associated British Ports (Hansard, 16 February 1983)

§ Mr. David Howell

The offer for sale of 19.6 million ordinary shares in Associated British Ports Holdings PLC attracted some 156,000 applications from the public for a total of nearly 660 million shares.

I welcome this interest by investors. It reflects in part the buoyancy of the market since the offer was underwritten on 2 February. But, more important, there is a clear vote of confidence in the future of the company in the private sector.

It was not practicable to allocate shares to all applicants and considerable efforts were made to eliminate suspected multiple applications. The response from employees was very encouraging and a total of 8,115 employees, over 90 per cent. of those eligible, now have a total of 1,736,545 shares.

On constituting the new Associated British Ports company, a statutory direction extinguished existing capital debt to the Government standing at £81.3 million and bearing interest at an average rate of about 6¼ per cent. and therefore in fact having a current value of some £45 million.

The Government will receive £21.95 million as gross proceeds from the sale and also £25 million in cash from the ABP Group. In addition the Government retain a shareholding of 48.5 per cent. of the company's issued share capital, worth £21.7 million at the offer price.

The Government's net expenditure for the sale is expected to be about £1.75 million.

I wish the group, with the support so substantially demonstrated by its employees, a successful future in the private sector.

£ million cash
	1977–78	1978–79	1979–80	1980–81	1981–82	1982–83 (estimated)	1983–84 (planned)
(a) Maintenance (current) non-structural and minor repairs^*
(i) motorways	10.5	14.3	17.5	21.8	26.0	24.8	28.4
(ii) trunk roads	16.3	21.1	23.9	25.8	35.6	28.5	33.0
(iii) lighting and other†	6.2	6.3	5.8	7.4	9.6	11.7	13.2
(b) Structural maintenance now classified as capital
(i) motorways	12.0	18.8	34.8	42.5	71.1	95.5	84.0
(ii) trunk roads	21.3	26.4	25.3	21.8	37.1	48.5	45.0
Total Maintenance	66.3	86.9	107.3	119.3	179.4	209.0	203.6
(c) Other capital
(i) motorways	117.5	131.6	150.1	156.1	192.9	262.7	431.2
(ii) trunk roads	105.1	80.0	115.9	165.7	167.6	184.1
(iii) not attributable‡	60.8	69.7	74.9	84.7	87.6	90.2	93.2
Total Other Capital≑	283.4	281.3	340.9	406.5	448.1	537.0	524.4
^* Some minor structural repairs remain classified as "current" maintenance expenditure.
†Minor errors in the lighting and other figures given to the hon. Member in an answer on 21 January have been corrected here.