I've done a bit of research and TFL have awarded a 7 year franchise on the London Overground to LOROL - a newly formed company that's 50% owned by MTR (they run Hong Kong's metro) and 50% owned by Deutsche Bahn.
That's made me less cynical - they're good companies.
Hopefully they'll have another powerpoint soon from their March 2009 presentation.
As for companies - I've revised my figure to six.
There will be two ToCs - LOROL & Southern
Two Leasing Companies - one for each above
- TFL (I'm expecting TFL to interfere with the ToCs)
- Railtrack
The train operators lease their stock as they can loose their franchise. If they did own and not lease the stock, then they would increase the number of carriages when they halve their service on a Sunday because of engineering works...instead of having eight carriages worth of people squeeze into four or less carriages every 30 minutes!