Tiphook

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Tiphook PLC was a United Kingdom headquartered transport services company that was registered on both the London and New York stock markets. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and became the world's second largest marine container leasing business in the 1990s.^[1]

Tiphook was established by Robert Montague in 1975 with the goal of capitalising on the transition towards ISO-based intermodal containerised based logistics. It focused on the leasing of containers and trailers to serve this expanding sector and quickly proved to be quite lucrative, and thus the company entered into the provision of other services, such as maintenance, as well as growing internationally. Throughout the 1980s, Tiphook frequently acquired various other companies, issuing shares and taking on debts in order to rapidly expand, yet the value of some of these acquisitions were subsequently called into question. While the company continued to be profitable into the early 1990s, it had built up a substantial debt burden that was leveraged upon its assets, the value of which dropped considerably as more containers became available on the market.

In the early 1990s, Tiphook's financial situation sharply declined as its assets depreciated sharply and questions over its accounting practices were raised by creditors; its expansion into the North American market had US accounting practices applicable, under which the condition of the company led to a technical, and then actual, default in its debt coverage. As a result, the company underwent drastic restructuring, Montague and many senior figures were pushed out, and Tiphook was broken up to pay off its debts during the mid-1990s. The rail leasing arm of the business was spun out in 1996 and briefly traded under the name International Wagon Services before being acquired by General Electric (GE) and integrated into its European rail leasing business.