(10 Sep 2013, 2:14 pm)aureolin wrote Shareholdings of NTL and the share of NTL revenue taken are two completely separate things though. Your shareholding stake in a limited company gives you voting powers. Your share of NTL revenue doesn't give you anything but hard cash.

Regarding the Fencehouses example (it's funny how that keeps cropping up ). It's a private limited company with share capital. As such, the company cannot be forced to sell shares to the new operator. Not even anti-competitive laws would dictate this. As a company director for a limited company, I'm actually contractually bound to offer any shares I wish to sell to other shareholders, prior to offering them to a 3rd party. This is not uncommon practice.

NTL is different. It's merely a Competition Act-compliant method of offering multi-modal, multi-operator ticketing. If the scheme was not open to participation by any and all operators, it would not meet the competition requirements of various Transport Acts and the Competition Act (and its special multi-operator ticketing arrangements) and would be declared illegal. Without knowing the articles of association of NTL, I can't claim this to be the gospel truth, but I'm fairly certain that's how it works.