MG Rover Group

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**MG Rover Group Limited**


Fate	Acquired
Successor	Nanjing Automobile Group
Founded	2000
Defunct	April 2005
Location	Longbridge, England
Industry	Automobiles
Key people	John Towers, Chief Executive
Peak size	6,000 employees

MG Rover was the last British-owned mass-production car manufacturer in the British motor industry. The company was formed by the sell-off of some of the original Rover Group volume car business by BMW in 2000; these had previously also been parts of British Leyland. MG Rover was acquired by the Nanjing Automobile Group in 2005.

1 History
2 Timeline
3 Brands
4 External links
5 Notes

[edit] History

MG Rover was formed from the parts of the former Rover Group volume car production business which BMW sold-off in 2000. BMW had acquired the Rover Group from British Aerospace in 1994 and had since sold the Land Rover business to Ford, and split-off the MINI business as a new BMW subsidiary based in Cowley. MG Rover took control of the remainder of the former Rover Group volume car business which was consolidated at the Longbridge plant.

[edit] Sale by BMW to Phoenix Consortium

When BMW sold off its interests, MG Rover was bought for a nominal £10 in May 2000 by a specially-assembled group of businessmen known as the Phoenix Consortium. The consortium was headed by ex-Rover Chief Executive John Towers. The company then ceased trading 8 April 2005 after having debts of over £1.4billion.

The year before BMW sold MG Rover, it had made losses of an estimated £800million. The four business men who took control of the newly-formed MG Rover Group (previously named Rover Car Operations) had have reported to receive around £430million in a dowry from BMW which included unsold stock.

[edit] MG Rover figures from 2000

In 2004, the company made losses of around £80million. MG Rover's best year for sales figures was in 2001 - at over 170,000 cars. In the year 2004, their sales were down to around 120,000, a decrease of 50,000.

[edit] Aborted deal with SAIC of China

In June, 2004, it was learned that Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation had signed a Joint Venture partnership to develop new models and technologies with MG Rover. This led to much speculation among the British media suggesting the Chinese company were poised to launch a takeover. Later that year, in November, news broke of an agreement between the two companies to create a joint venture company to produce up to a million cars a year, with the production shared between MG Rover's Longbridge site and locations in China. SAIC were to have a 70% stake in this company in return for a £1 billion investment, with MG Rover owning the remaining 30%. However, this agreement had to be ratified by the Chinese government, specifically its National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The Commission was of the mind that if BMW could not make a success of Rover, then it would be hard for SAIC to do so.

On December 8, 2004, Tata of India, which had cooperated over the export of the Tata Indica as the CityRover, threatened to cease its agreement with MG Rover if the SAIC tie-up went ahead, according to the Indian press. Tata claimed the report was inaccurate two days later.

SAIC did purchase the technical rights to manufacture Rover's 25 and 75 models, and for the Powertrain Ltd business, for £67 million last year. It did not acquire the Rover name, which was still owned by BMW at the time (See 'Brands' below).

In January 2005, it was revealed that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had intervened to support the alliance between MG Rover and SAIC. MG Rover could not give a date on which the agreement would be finalized.

Figures released by the company showed that the sale of Rover-branded cars fell in 2004 compared to 2003.

In April 2005 it was reported that the partnership deal with SAIC was in trouble because both SAIC and the British Government had discovered that MG Rover's finances were in a far more parlous condition than had previously been thought. On 7 April 2005 the company announced that it was suspending production because of component shortages. Later in the day, it was announced by Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, that the company was being placed in receivership. Her statement was based on a conversation with MG Rover chairman, John Towers. It was later denied by MG Rover Group, although the company admitted that it had engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accountancy firm, to advise on its current financial situation. In the event, MG Rover placed itself in administration on 8 April 2005, a different status than receivership under British law.

On 8 April 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited the offices of the Transport and General Workers' Union in Birmingham and stated that there might be some hope for the future of the company, although not the original deal agreed with SAIC.

On 10 April 2005, MG Rover announced that they had received a £6.5 million loan from the British Government. ^[1] This would cover worker wages for one week while buy-out proposals were made to SAIC. The same week, SAIC denied it had ever made an offer to buy MG Rover and threatened to sue anyone who attempted to make the 25 and 75 models.

Wikinews has news related to:

Last British volume car manufacturer closes down

[edit] Acquisition by Nanjing Automobile Group

On 15 April 2005, it was announced that SAIC had once again rejected pleas to buy out the company. With no other rescue deal in the pipeline, the administrators were not in a position to seek further funding from the government and announced that redundancy notices to Longbridge staff would be issued.

By the end of April 2005, Sir Richard Branson had reportedly expressed an interest in buying the remaining assets of the company for the purpose of reviving the marque in order to enter the hybrid automobile market, and several other parties were also rumoured as wishing to buy the remnants, including two Russian businessmen (one of whom denied the reports) as well as the Iranian state-owned car manufacturer, SAIPA.

SAIC had claimed that it had already acquired Intellectual Property Rights in some Rover product for £67 million in the autumn of 2004, including the Rover 25, the Rover 75 and the Rover Powertrain K-series engine, but the Administrators advised that there was still interest in saving some other parts of the company, including MG, and Friday, May 13, 2005 was set as the deadline for bids from potential investors.

On Friday, May 20, the Administrators announced that, after considering numerous proposals, they had entered talks with two unnamed "overseas companies" with a view to restarting one or more of the Longbridge production lines. Nevertheless, the following week they informed creditors that they by then expected the company to proceed instead to a creditors' voluntary liquidation, setting the date for a preliminary Creditors' Meeting to be held in Birmingham on Friday, June 10, 2005. At that meeting, creditors learned that so little of value was left in the company that there would probably be negligible or even no repayment of its outstanding debt and that, although three bidders were then still negotiating to acquire the company intact as a going concern, the Administrators had instructed their agents to prepare for the piecemeal sale of the very few remaining assets in the event that satisfactory negotiations for the sale of the entire business were not concluded.

On Thursday, July 14, it was reported that Magma Holdings, a financial group including former Ford Motor Company and General Motors executives, working in conjunction with SAIC, would be making an offer for both MG Rover and engine maker Rover Powertrain which, if successful, would see at least some production being restarted at Longbridge, and that talks with the other two interested parties – China's Nanjing Automobile Group and Project Kimber (a consortium of Birmingham businessmen led by David James) – were still in progress.

On Monday, July 18, Magma Holdings and SAIC formalized their bid with an offer of £60 million. However, that offer was not well-received and on Friday, July 22, the Administrators announced that the entire group had been sold to the Nanjing Automobile Group for around £53 million, with a deposit of around $5 million, indicating that their preliminary plans involved relocating the Powertrain engine plant to China and splitting car production into Rover lines in China and MG lines in the West Midlands (though not necessarily at Longbridge), where a UK R&D and technical facility would also be developed. But on Saturday, August 27, The Daily Telegraph reported that the balance of around £47 million, due on August 22 had not been paid. Citing confidentiality, the Administrators declined to comment.

Nanjing Automobile started shipping equipment from Longbridge to China on Thursday, September 15 and, according to a report in The Times on Saturday, September 17, were close to a deal with SAIC under which they would manufacture the Rover 25 and Powertrain engines while SAIC would produce a stretched Rover 75. Nanjing Automobile Group was reported to be in exclusive negotiations with GB Sports Cars, a venture by former Rover managers, to re-establish MG production at Longbridge.

In late October, key ex-workers received letters from Nanjing Automobile Group offering 10 months' work dismantling plant at Longbridge for reassembly in China while talks with GB Sports Cars continued. However, after announcing that the UK government had not offered any substantial assistance in either grants or loans, Nanjing Automobile was also reported to have begun negotiations with at least two other potential partners, including "a wealthy San Francisco family", and, in early November, Nanjing committed to making every effort "to resume production [at Longbridge] at the beginning of 2007".

In the autumn of 2006, Nanjing announced plans to build three new MG model ranges which are expected to go on sale by the end of 2008. It was also revealed that the Austin marque may be revived on at least some of the MG range, some 20 years after it was discontinued.

In March 2007, as the second anniversary of MG Rover's bankruptcy loomed, it was reported that more than 30 of the marque's products were still waiting to be sold. [[1]]

[edit] Timeline

2000: MG Rover was formed as the part of the former Rover Group's mass-market car business which BMW sold to the Phoenix Consortium for a nominal £10.
2001: MG Rover bought Qvale of Italy (Only bought the factory and the rights of platform of the Mangusta car. MG Rover did not acquire the rights of the Qvale name)
2001: The MG ZR, MG ZS and MG ZT (based on the Rover 25, Rover 45, Rover 75 respectively) are launched as sporting alternatives to the standard Rover models.
2002: MG Rover agrees to collaborate with Tata of India.
2003: MG Rover launches the new MG SV and SV-R, prices start at around £65,000. The car is based on the Qvale Mangusta.
2003: MG Rover launches the new CityRover - a small 5 door hatchback city car which is the product of last year's collaboration with Tata. It was first sold as the Tata Indica in 1998.
2004: MG Rover enters talks with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) about a possible collaboration.
2005: The proposed collaboration Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) collapses, forcing the company into administration.
2005: Nanjing Automobile Group acquires the entire assets of MG Rover.
2005/06: Nanjing Automobile Group announces to build cars at Longbridge after signing a deal to lease the site for 33 years.
2006: SAIC sets up a new company called Roewe and now builds a car based on the Rover 75 platform called the Roewe 750.
2006: Ford buys the rights to the Rover marque, meaning that only the MG badge will be used on the new range of Nanjing-built cars. Nanjing announces the possibility of relaunching the Austin marque for a new generation of cars which are planned for a launch in 2008.
2007: Nanjing Automobile Group restarts MG TF and MG7 production at Longbridge and in China