Since Railtrack is responsible for much of that deterioration, having been in charge now for six years, it would be reasonable to expect it to find the money But Railtrack is not an ordinary company. A comparison with that other troubled utility British Telecom is instructive. BT too has got itself into a hole, largely off its own making, and is groaning under an unsustainable debt mountain. But whereas BT's answer is to pass the dividend, sell off its best assets and tap shareholders for £6bn, Railtrack's response is to maintain the dividend, shuffle the assets into a new corporate structure and tap the taxpayer for the money it is short of.Railtrack would dearly love to mount a similar rescue rights issue But the bombed out share price prevents that.
In any event, shareholders will not know whether the company they own is financeable until Mr Marshall has got an answer to his latest demand for subsidy.Railtrack has got political blackmail down to a fine art. Give us the money or watch us go bust and then see what a real railway disaster looks like. But the horrible truth is that it has become a bottomless pit. The company does not have a register of its assets as its third finance director in six months is discovering to his surprise. And although the Rail Regulator thinks he knows how much the business is worth, no-one really knows how much it needs to avoid another of the collective breakdowns that followed Hatfield.An election campaign might have been the occasion to concentrate the mind about what needs to be done. But the Tories have shot their fox having been responsible for rail privatisation in the first place and Tony Blair's new radicalism is far too timid to countenance taking the industry back into public ownership. Hardly something worth raising a glass to.LSE floatEvery day the London Stock Exchange's Regulatory News Service issues countless vapid statements on behalf of the its 3,000 listed companies, and now the empty rhetoric appears to have rubbed off on the LSE itself.
The key message accompanying yesterday's confirmation that the LSE is to float was a pledge from the new broom, Clara Furse, that she intends to deliver wait for it shareholder value, by making the LSE bigger and better. The only measurable goal in yesterday's strategy to become the world's lowest cost exchange has apparently already been achieved. The other targets making the LSE the "market of choice" in Europe, extending technology and forging partnerships hardly add up to the world's most exciting business plan.So it is probably a good thing that the LSE isn't raising any new money when it lists in July. Even Don Cruickshank, its chairman, reckons the general benefits of listing, in terms of greater liquidity, are perhaps already in the price of the shares, which are traded on a matched-bargain basis.To be fair on Mrs Furse, coming out with plans for world domination would be unwise.
