Metronet - Financial Crisis

Financial Crisis

On 17 July 2007 it was reported that Metronet was "teetering on the brink of administration". The situation arose because it had received only £121m out of the £551m it needed to cover cost over-runs. By contrast, Tube Lines, the other PPP company, had brought in almost all of its works on time and on budget.

On 18 July 2007, an administration order was made. The Court appointed Ernst & Young LLP in the persons of Alan Robert Bloom, Roy Bailey, Margaret Elizabeth Mills and Stephen John Harris as special PPP administrators. To enable the business activities to be kept going it was subsequently bailed out by the UK Government at a cost of £2 billion. On 27 May 2008, Metronet came out of administration and the contracts and employees transferred to Transport for London under two new temporary companies, LUL Nominee BCV Ltd and LUL Nominee SSL Ltd.

On 3 December 2009, the PPP business of former Metronet Rail became an integral part of London Underground.

In 2010 the House of Commons' Public Accounts Committee reprimanded the Department for Transport for its failure to heed National Audit Office warnings about the company's management.

By the beginning of 2011 with the formal liquidation process having been completed, the Metronet brand and group of companies had ceased to exist.