NEXT month investors will have the opportunity to buy a ticket to ride on Thomas the Tank Engine as the popular children's toy town character puffs into the London stock market in a public offering worth £30 million sterling. The Britt Allcroft company, owned by husband and wife team Britt Allcroft and Angus Wright, are the majority shareholders with 28 per cent of the equity.
The placing will raise £5 million which the company will use to develop brand marketing for its stable of other children's characters. BAC, which gets 90 per cent of revenue from television rights to Thomas, made pre-tax profits of £2 million last year on sales of £11.6 million.
Allcroft and Wright paid £50,000 in 1981 to a Church of England clergyman, the Reverend A.W. Awdry, who created the Thomas character, for marketing and merchandising rights, excluding book publication. A sweet return on investment but, as Ms Allcroft says, "it was a lot of money in those days". The booking office opens on November 6th when tickets can be purchased, at a price yet to be determined, from a more than usually florid fat controller.
