For the most part, Brian Souter lives in a £1million mansion in Perth with his wife Betty and their children, or at their weekend retreat at Ochtertyre, Crieff. Along with his sister Ann Gloag, once Scotland's richest woman, he owns the bus company, Stagecoach. Stagecoach had become a public transport firm in the FTSE 100 index chalking up £96 million profit in 1999. Brian Souter was Scotland's richest man and a prominent member of the evangelical Church of the Nazarene based in Kansas, USA, which claims to 'cure' homosexuality. Souter once owned Prestwick airport and bought the second largest bus operator in the US: Coach USA. Coach USA stretches across 35 states and Canada with a fleet of more than 7,000 coaches and 3,000 taxicabs. Brian Souter's business empire, stretches from Scandinavia to Africa, the US and even Hong Kong where he had a 60 per cent stake in the biggest commuter travel company, Road King. Ferries chugging across Auckland harbour and the Yellow Bus division in New Zealand all bore Souter's mark. By 2002, along with his sister, Souter teamed up with the Bank of Scotland and property consultants Montagu Evans to form Highfield Properties (Holdings) in a £54m deal to acquire a portfolio of retail premises in UK towns. However, Souter is more famous in Scotland for having hired an ex-editor of The Scottish Sun, PR man Jack Irvine, to challenge the Scottish Executive over the repeal of Section 2a (Clause 28), an English Tory law that singled out gays; denying us equality in sex education.
Cracks have appeared in the wall of Souter's Mammon. Back in July 2000, family man, William Hinckley, a Stagecoach boss was caught by police entrapment in Houston, USA using the services of a rentboy. He told an undercover cop "he wanted all of it", was convicted of 'moral turpitude' and fined. Souter was said to be furious.
Stagecoach is no longer in the FTSE 100 index. Plans to buy a 35% stake in Italy's largest bus company, Sogin had to be pulled; hopes of a network of airports were dashed and Prestwick Airport was sold at a loss. Stagecoach's 60% stake in Hong Kong's Road King has been written off, so too Sweden's Swebus. Souter paid too much for Coach USA and group chief executive Mike Kinski, executive chairman of Coach USA Larry King, has since resigned. So too did another chief executive, Keith Cochrane. Brian Souter took over the day-to-day running of Coach USA in a bid to turn around its fortunes. Whilst Brian Souter prepared for his new role as chairman, he doodled the faces of two clocks on a pad in front of him. Time was running out. Porterbrook, Souter's rail leasing business has been sold. Stagecoach shares have plunged 11% after falling profits in their UK business were announced. Stagecoach's profits also plunged when Brian Souter's rail subsidiaries - he owns 49% of Virgin Rail - lost £2million.
Souter had transformed a profit of £182.3million into a £316.5million loss! The value of the stake he and his sister Ann Gloag held has fallen by more than £1billion from £1.25billion two years previously, to just £187million. Souter has blamed the rail chaos after the Hatfield train crash and the cost of buying Coach USA. Stagecoach shares tumbled; despite the announcement taxpayers are likely to have to fork out £465m to Virgin Rail in order to repair faulty tracks on the west coast line.
In October 2002, an unidentified investor sold nearly five per cent of the company at a knock-down price of 9.75 a share. Stagecoach's battered share price plunged a further 44%. Shares that once sold at 975p were almost selling in single figures! Souter and Gloag, once worth about £1bn, now have a combined shareholding of just £38.9m. Souter plans to offload around 50% of ailing Coach USA's assets.
Brian Souter once suggested he would give up all his money and go live on a scheme rather than let Clause 28 be repealed in Scotland. Fingers crossed, eh?
