UK close to sale of Eurostar rail stake to UK, Canadian funds - Sky
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is close to agreeing the sale of its 40 percent stake in the Eurostar rail link to a consortium of Canadian pension fund Caisse de Depot du Placement du Quebec and British asset manager Hermes, Sky News reported on Tuesday.
Sky said the deal would be announced on Wednesday and the price was not yet clear although it would raise hundreds of millions of pounds.
Chancellor George Osborne announced plans to sell the stake in Eurostar, a high-speed rail link between Britain and continental Europe, in October last year.
The stake has previously been identified by the government for sale as part of a plan to pay down its debt by selling off 20 billion pounds worth of public assets.
A Treasury spokesman declined to comment on the report which cited a rail industry source. Hermes also declined to comment.
(Reporting by William James, David Milliken and Nishant Kumar; editing by William Schomberg)
