TWO-THIRDS of Britain’s trains are set to change hands for a total of about £4 billion as banks seek to raise further capital by selling assets.

Abbey, owned by Spain’s Santander, is poised to sell its train-leasing arm Porterbrook to Deutsche Bank in a £2 billion deal that could be announced as early as this week.

HSBC Rail could also be sold in another £2 billion deal, after its parent company, HSBC, appointed two sets of advisers to auction it. The deal will be handled by NM Rothschild, the investment bank, and HSBC’s own investment-banking arm.

Porterbrook has a fleet of 5,500 vehicles, including electric and diesel locomotives, high-speed trains, and freight wagons. It leases trains to 17 of the 24 UK train operators.

HSBC Rail has more than 4,000 vehicles, including the inter-city trains used by National Express on the east coast mainline between London and Edinburgh.

Britain’s remaining 4,500 trains are owned by Angel Trains, sold this year by Royal Bank of Scotland to the Australian investment bank Babcock & Brown for £3.6 billion.

The rolling-stock groups were created after the break-up of British Rail in the 1990s. The financial institutions that bought them from the government — and a small group of executives that participated in the buyouts — made killings when they sold them on, prompting fat-cat allegations.

Recently they have been the subject of a Competition Commission investigation, from which they emerged fairly unscathed. In recent years they have branched out overseas, buying new vehicles to hire to continental train companies. Santander and HSBC are among the few banks that so far appear to have come through the credit crunch in good shape. However, now that rivals have received state money, these two may have to raise capital to bolster their capital base, analysts say.

Sources at HSBC said it had not yet decided to sell its rail arm and would wait for advisers to complete a review.

Some analysts, though, would probably welcome any move by the banking giant to sell assets. Last week shares in HSBC fell 16% on fears over its exposure to mortgage assets and the Hong Kong economy, which appears to be slowing.

Michael Helsby, a Morgan Stanley analyst, warned that at HSBC North America the book value of assets, mainly sub-prime loans, is $33 billion (£21 billion) more than their market value.

If the bank writes off that sum, its capital reserves would fall to the level at which its rival UK banks are having to be recapitalised, said Helsby.

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