{"id":407638,"date":"2026-04-17T17:39:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/?p=70641"},"modified":"2026-04-17T17:39:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:39:30","slug":"lineas-is-once-again-a-fully-state-owned-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=407638","title":{"rendered":"Lineas is once again a fully state-owned company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The adventure of Lineas as a (partially) private operator lasted a little over 10 years. The European Commission has approved \u201cthe acquisition of sole control\u201d of the company by Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 f\u00e9d\u00e9rale de participations et d&#8217;investissement (SFPIM), Belgium sovereign wealth fund. The timeline and value of the acquisition are not yet known.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-70641\"><\/span>It all started in 2015, when Belgian national railway holding SNCB sold 69% of the shares of its logistics arm to Argos Wityu, a European investment fund. Another 21% was added in 2019. Two years later, SNCB\u2019s remaining 10% was acquired by SFPIM, which increased its stake to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2024\/02\/06\/belgian-state-increases-stake-in-ailing-lineas-to-45\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">45%<\/a> in 2024 and will now take full ownership.<\/p>\n<h2>A tough decade<\/h2>\n<p>Throughout these years, and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, Lineas has been struggling financially with losses and debts piling up. Over the last year or so, the Belgian government has approved two injections of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2025\/07\/17\/lineas-to-get-61-million-euros-from-belgian-government\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">61<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railfreight.com\/business\/2026\/02\/02\/lineas-struggle-for-survival-continues\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">60<\/a> million euros to save Lineas from the abyss of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically enough, it was Lineas who denounced the situation regarding illegal state aid to France and Germany\u2019s national rail freight operators. As a consequence, both companies are undergoing massive restructurings. Now, Lineas finds itself in a similar spot, as it is back into the state\u2019s hands and heavily dependent on public support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The adventure of Lineas as a (partially) private operator lasted a little over 10 years. The European Commission has approved \u201cthe acquisition of sole control\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17471,867,72,3497,471,47,9892],"tags":[12634],"class_list":["post-407638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argos-wityu","category-belgium","category-business","category-lineas","category-news","category-rail-news","category-sfpim","tag-railfreight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407639,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407638\/revisions\/407639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}