WTF Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 4 hours ago, woolley said: OK, but I still believe it was ordered by the Steam Packet and built at their instruction from day one. i also heard it was a cancelled fuck up, the thing was built strong enough with better quality materials that weighed less which is why it has a shit load of ballast added and has to run with ballast in trailers on freight light journeys to get it to sit low enough in the water. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4mbi Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 45 minutes ago, The Amazing Ronrico said: I’m sure that’s exactly what Mac Quarrie and Espirito thought as they loaded previous incarnations of the SPC up with debt too. We’ll get it back in a few years. This is a cash cow. But it didn’t end well did it? The motivations for purchasing the business were very, very different for Macquarie and IOM Government. Of course it didn't end well, because Macquarie put a shitload of unsustainable debt onto the company, ripped it for dividends, and defaulted, leaving a Portuguese bank to take a big write off, and own a shipping company it didn't want. IOM Government have secured control over lifeline ferry services, and can load the company with sustainable debt, for the benefit of the residents of the Isle of Man, not a Portuguese bank or shareholders of an Australian multi-national. stick to hypnotism. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4mbi Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 32 minutes ago, sir nige said: whats it making now? and the old owners said spending would be £170m between 2020-2026..... Results not yet published for 2019. Totally irrelevant what the IOMSPC said in their "take it or leave it offer" whilst under previous ownership and trying to negotiate a new user agreement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolley Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 1 minute ago, WTF said: i also heard it was a cancelled fuck up, the thing was built strong enough with better quality materials that weighed less which is why it has a shit load of ballast added and has to run with ballast in trailers on freight light journeys to get it to sit low enough in the water. Do you have any evidence of this to link? I'm not trying to score points, I'm just interested. You do hear this "cancellation" tale quite often, mainly from the man down the pub, but I've never seen anything to substantiate it. If it was true then knowing the skeet mill hereabouts, surely we would have got to know where she was originally bound for? At the same time, I'm sure that I remember contemporary reports back then that she was specified by the Packet and of progress on the vessel from the keel up. She is quite a straightforward design using practice of the time. I don't see anything from her record to suggest she is not ideal for the task of operating a ro-pax service in the Irish Sea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTeapot Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 2 minutes ago, woolley said: Do you have any evidence of this to link? I'm not trying to score points, I'm just interested. You do hear this "cancellation" tale quite often, mainly from the man down the pub, but I've never seen anything to substantiate it. If it was true then knowing the skeet mill hereabouts, surely we would have got to know where she was originally bound for? The sister ship owned by the NZ Navy had a number of problems of the kind WTF refers to I think. Might be called the Canterbury Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sir nige Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 7 minutes ago, b4mbi said: Results not yet published for 2019. Totally irrelevant what the IOMSPC said in their "take it or leave it offer" whilst under previous ownership and trying to negotiate a new user agreement. all iomg is doing is loading it with unsustainable debt for zero reason......and users wil pay for it..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monasqueen Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 The rumours were fairly substantial at the time.... smoke, fire, and all that. She was certainly in need of a lot of extra weight to keep her more stable. There was also a lot in the rumour mill about costs being cut to keep her cheap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolley Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 Here we are: Previous thread on the origins of the Ben. Nothing new under the sun, and certainly not on MF. manxman8180 MF Veteran Regulars 387 3,113 posts Location:Who's asking? Report post Posted March 21, 2013 Just to add my own bit of knowledge to the mix about the many myths surrounding the BMC...... She wasn't a cancelled order, but as above a fairly standard design ordered pretty much off the shelf. Concrete ballast was added, but this was in the form of 'plinths' added in some of the void spaces next to the outer skin of the 'hull' with metal plate welded on the other side to sandwich it in. Prior to this, they also carried a number of trailers specifically for ballast with conrete in as also stated above. Concrete wasn't 'poured in', and much of the ballast was added way above the water line. Ask any mariner, if you have too much ballast very low down, you end up with something like a 'weeble', it may be less likely to fully 'roll', but it will tend to weeble all over the place, correcting itself rapidly and would actually be more uncomfortable for passengers. You need ballast hgiher up to help the overall deadweight in the water, but to also slow down the rate of correction from a roll in weather. The whole 'wrong steel' myth is also highly amusing. You need to appreciate that the BMC was designed to take 1000+ tonnes of freight, but the 'unique' loading requirements of an Island, mean that she only carries that sort of weight on one of her 4 daily crossings. If you speak to any of the crew, this was always when the BMC performed the best, as she was sat lower in the water. The additional ballast trailers would often be removed overnight as they weren't needed, as it was sailing in the manner it was designed for (carrying 1000+ tonnes) The extra weight when the pax accommodation was added will have helped the overall situation as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Amazing Ronrico Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 (edited) 23 minutes ago, b4mbi said: The motivations for purchasing the business were very, very different for Macquarie and IOM Government. Of course it didn't end well, because Macquarie put a shitload of unsustainable debt onto the company, ripped it for dividends, and defaulted, leaving a Portuguese bank to take a big write off, and own a shipping company it didn't want. IOM Government have secured control over lifeline ferry services, and can load the company with sustainable debt, for the benefit of the residents of the Isle of Man, not a Portuguese bank or shareholders of an Australian multi-national. stick to hypnotism. Not really it’s a monopoly that can be milked this government know that as much as any commercial buyer ever did. It’s worrying that they intend to load it up with £150m of debt almost immediately. And a big chunk of that new debt is going pay off .... debt originally lent to it by the taxpayer. It doesn’t bode well at all as the debt they are buying out was returning a good rate for Treasury. The new debt will now be returning a good rate for an external investor instead. It seems clear that they wish to use the company as a debt raising vehicle just like the last owners so that they can hide taxpayer costs. Edited March 9, 2020 by The Amazing Ronrico Spelling error 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4mbi Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 2 minutes ago, sir nige said: all iomg is doing is loading it with unsustainable debt for zero reason......and users wil pay for it..... Yes, of course the users of the service will pay. That's how business works. The new debt will not be unsustainable, if you'd bothered following and understanding my previous post, which links to the audited accounts and reading for yourself the publicly available report on future financing options for IOMSPC. Having a brand new vessel and control of the company is not "zero reason" Your trolling is a bit tiresome tbh. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolley Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 12 minutes ago, monasqueen said: The rumours were fairly substantial at the time.... smoke, fire, and all that. She was certainly in need of a lot of extra weight to keep her more stable. There was also a lot in the rumour mill about costs being cut to keep her cheap. All this does is prove how difficult it is to shake off rumours. This is a clincher for me because I remember the reports of the keel laying ceremony at the time: MANANNAN MF Senior Member Regulars 105 302 posts Report post Posted March 20, 2013 (edited) The Ben-My-Chree was specifically designed for the Douglas to Heysham route by the Isle Of Man Steam Packet Company and Sea Containers. Why would Steam Packet Mangement have been at the Keel Laying Cermony if they hadn't ordered her? The additional ballast you are all thinking of is the aft passenger accommodation block added in 2004. This was not purely a ballast job, it was added to increase passenger space and improve passenger comfort. It did, however, improve efficiency, as the Ben now sits lower in the water, improving her speed and efficiency. She has always been a Packet Boat! Edited March 20, 2013 by MANANNAN Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Amazing Ronrico Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 5 minutes ago, b4mbi said:The new debt will not be unsustainable, if you'd bothered following and understanding my previous post, which links to the audited accounts and reading for yourself the publicly available report on future financing options for IOMSPC. It would be interesting to know what the market cap of the company was just before it sold. We paid £38 million for the equity it’s now going to have £150 million of debt sat in it. Which must be reasonably large compared to its market cap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4mbi Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 3 minutes ago, The Amazing Ronrico said: Not really it’s a monopoly that can be milked this government know that as much as any commercial buyer ever did. It’s worrying that they intend to load it up with £150m of debt almost immediately. And a chunk of that new dent is going pay off .... debt lent to it by the taxpayer. It doesn’t bode well at all as the dent they are buying out was returning a good rate for Treasury. The new debt will now be returning a good rate for an external investor instead. It seems clear that they wish to use the company as a debt raising vehicle just like the last owners so that they can hide taxpayer costs. Read the Tynwald discussions and the financing options. Govt think a private placement can be sourced at between 2-2.5% Treasury's managed investment funds are receiving a higher return than this (of course this may change with the corona crash), so why would they put in £76m to get 2% return from IOMSPC, when they can get say 5% from the external investment managers? (extra £2.3m p.a.) Not about hiding taxpayer costs at all, but rather prudent management of investment funds. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Amazing Ronrico Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 (edited) 5 minutes ago, b4mbi said: Not about hiding taxpayer costs at all, but rather prudent management of investment funds. It looks to me that it’s about hiding taxpayer costs as otherwise why would they repay the £78 million with new external debt so soon? Probably so they can go back to the taxpayer By election time and say ‘this is now costing us nothing the taxpayer got it’s money back in 18 months’ while they’re stacking future debt inside the business instead. As I said above I’d like to know how many shares were in circulation before the sale to work out the likely market cap of the company relative to the £150M debt it’s now taking on. Edited March 9, 2020 by The Amazing Ronrico Added para Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4mbi Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 1 minute ago, The Amazing Ronrico said: It would be interesting to know what the market cap of the company was just before it sold. We paid £38 million for the equity it’s now going to have £150 million of debt sat in it. Which must be reasonably large compared to its market cap. For a private company, the market cap = market value, so what a buyer is willing to pay and seller willing to accept, so £124m! A consideration when arriving at market value is the company's net assets , but also the expected net present value of the future cashflows, which when the owner can control these.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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