Karen Letten joins Steer to lead its European rail market

Steer is pleased to welcome Karen Letten as European Rail Market Leader in the London office. Karen has more than 20 years of experience addressing strategic and commercial issues in transport in the UK and in Continental Europe. Her experience has been in both high speed and classic rail, and covers transaction advice, commercial due diligence, partnering and joint ventures, business and corporate strategy, strategic planning, business case development, franchise specification and procurement, stakeholder management and transformational change.

Prior to Steer, Karen developed and implemented the strategy for SNCB (Belgian Railways) international operations in an open access environment. In close cooperation with other international railways, she worked on successive projects to consolidate their Eurostar and Thalys businesses and to enable these ventures to operate in an open access environment. In 2013 Karen joined the UK Department for Transport as Project Director for the Rail Franchising Programme where she gained a good understanding of the UK rail franchising process and the characteristics of sustainable franchise proposals. In 2018 Karen became Corporate Strategy Officer for SNCB, responsible for guiding them through the changes in industry structure and market dynamics resulting from the 4th railway package (liberalisation of the domestic rail market).

At Steer, Karen will be working on strategic and commercial issues both in the UK and in Continental Europe and will focus on leveraging Steer’s industry expertise to help clients with market opportunities in Europe.

"We are really pleased to have Karen join Steer”, said Head of UK Advisory Luke Miller. “The fourth railway package has accelerated the pace of change in the rail industry throughout Europe. With the skills and experience that Karen brings to Steer, and the expertise of Steer in UK rail and infrastructure, we continue to expand the scope of the commercial, financial and technical advice we provide to operators, investors and regulators involved in European rail."