How TGM floated to expand

Source: Supply Chain Digital

Date :12/12/2007 08:52:09

Tellings Golden Miller started from a small coach company some 35 years ago and it has grown successfully and made a step change when it floated on AIM in 2005.

Written by John O’Hanlon and produced by Paul Radbourne

Not long ago Tellings Golden Miller was a mid-sized privately owned bus and coach operator based in the south of England and doing rather well. The company was owned by Stephen Telling and his wife together with Julian Peddle, who held 28 percent of the shares. The main depot was at Twickenham; there was a second depot at Portsmouth; and TGM held a 60 percent interest in Linkline Coaches based in north-west London and a 30 percent holding in Burtons, of Haverhill in West Suffolk.

TGM was successfully operating Transport for London contracts in Surrey and south-west London. Telling saw opportunities for expansion not only in London but in other parts of the country too, and seeing that another coach operator in Wales had raised some very useful capital on the AIM market decided to enter into discussion with City advisors. He and his fellow directors decided that an offering could do the same for TGM, raising some cash for the business, releasing some funds to the shareholders, and allowing the company to inaugurate a share options saving scheme to reward its staff.

The company floated 30 percent of its shares on the AIM market in August 2003, leaving the three original shareholders firmly in control but allowing TGM to embark on the first stages of a planned expansion, which started with the acquisition of the balance of the shares in Linkline and Burtons (which accounted for nearly a third of the group’s £31 million 2006 turnover), and the purchase of some small companies that were consolidated into...

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