Monday, February 2nd, 2009
Great Britain announced it will provide its auto industry with $1.8 billion in government loans recently, after months of pleading from Jaguar, Land Rover, and Vauxhall. France and Germany have already pumped government money into their automakers to sustain them through the credit crunch and economic downturn, and the U.S. provided GM and Chrysler with government loans in the last month of George W. Bush’s presidential term. Great Britain exports 76% of the cars it builds.
In December, British automakers had to cut production nearly in half due to a backlog of unsold product. Like the United States, Great Britain is dealing with national unemployment that has been rising for 11 straight months. Analysts do not believe the British loans will be sufficient to rescue their troubled car makers but may be sufficient to keep them afloat through the rest of 2009.
Tags:
British Car Industry,
jaguar,
landrover
Posted in Business | Comments
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Similar to the setup of Ford in the much celebrated big three auto bailout, Jaguar Land Rover of Britain announced that they do not need government bailout. Rather, like Ford, they would need credit flowing again either from direct lending or state-backed loans.
The company, part of India’s Tata Motors , axed 450 jobs last week due to falling demand.
“We are clearly in very difficult times, in difficult trading conditions,” Chief Executive David Smith told Sky News.
Smith said he would also like the government to consider short-term funding to subsidise layoffs similar to those being requested in the Netherlands by Tata’s Anglo-Dutch steel production unit Corus .
Tata bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford in June last year for about $2.3 billion (S$3.4 billion). The company has four sites in the West Midlands region and one at Halewood, northwest England.
(Source) Asiaone Motoring
Tags:
bailout,
jaguar,
Land Rover,
landrover,
layoffs,
tata motors
Posted in Jaguar | Comments