LR & Jag Struggling

[hrh_dave]

BBC News
^{The government has held talks with Jaguar Land Rover over the possibility of state aid for the carmaker, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has confirmed.}


Oh great not another MG saga........ Why do things have a tendency to go pear shaped when the Dark Lord Mandelson gets involved......

[nellyscossy]

the government have taxed the 4x4's to death (big jags too!!)   so people arent buying them,,

now its bail out time.........why should we bail anyone out the company belongs to tata a very wealthy company and theyve only owned the company for 5 mins....

[crazymac]

AND Tata have just announced that they will be the main sponser for Ferrari F1!!

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/17122008/13/indian-carmaker-sponsor-ferrari.html

[zebidee]

Wasn't the point of Tata buying LR/Jag that they had plenty of money and would be able to sort stuff out?

What's happened to all that money now?

Z~

[hrh_dave]

Maybe it wasn't there in the first place......

[Range Rover Blues]

If they are going to bail it out, that means we all own it so it should be nationalised.

[TEMPER593]

ford reckon that we made them over 1 billion profit last year.

so they sell us off take the money from the sale and the profit and leave us with nowt in the kitty
and now TATA have gotta spend shed loads to sort it all out

Well u no what they say British is best if u ask me it should of stayed that way!!!

[crazymac]

I notice that they have also cancelled the G4 challenge!

Obviously Tata think that F1 will give them a better profile and better advertising than the G4 challenge, much more appropriate to four wheel drive vehicles!!! :roll:

[Boddle]

 Please be careful to understand the problem correctly, As far as I'm aware Jaguar Land-Rover were seeking funds to helps suppliers not themselves as many of there supplier are linked in with Ford and they go under there supplier will to.
 As it stands at the moment the most worring issue for Jaguar Land-Rover is that congress refused to grant the American auto industry money that ultimately will detemind Jaguar Land-Rover Fate.

[Range Rover Blues]

Ford was forced to sell LR Jag to make up the huge deficit in it's US pension funds (possibly |UK pension funds too). 

It's a legacy of decades of paying off unions with sweet deals to stop industrial action.  Where else do you get 52 weeks maternity leave on FULL PAY :shock:

So to some extent the greed of the unions is now to blame as well as missmanagement and lack of forsight.  Can't blame the management completely for that though when governments are just as guilty of not planning for a rainy day.

[hobbit]

Wouldn't be surprised if Tata, rape and pillage what they can out of LR/Jag then toss it aside, seems to be the done thing nowadays

[Range Rover Blues]

I'd not be surprised if they start making the Defender in India rather than bring out a new model.  As for the rest, time will tell.  There's a lot of knowledge and ingenuity with LR Jag that they can't just cut out and keep, but I guess most of all it's the bottom line.

[MrTFWitt]

I'd not be surprised if they start making the Defender in India rather than bring out a new model.  As for the rest, time will tell.  There's a lot of knowledge and ingenuity with LR Jag that they can't just cut out and keep, but I guess most of all it's the bottom line.

Wonder if it would be marketed as a Tata Ghurka II, theres a shining example of build quality.
I know a cheap labour force could be trained to the same standard but they would have the same staff retention issues as the Indian IT industry, trained staff can move for better money and trapping them with contract clauses causes job dissatisfaction.
With the shift in exchange rates since the Tata purchase the UK staff must be costing less run now as well.

Looks as though Mandelson will reign it all in.

A really sceptical view would be the money is needed to prop up Tata motors after it was forced to abandon the Singur plant after protests from farmers who owned the land it was building the Tata Nano plant on.

[SteveGoodz]

A bit off topic, but related to the OP:

It was interesting to hear one of the directors at MAN say he expected Germany to suffer less than the UK during this recession because they have a larger industrial base than we do ... having closed down pretty much all of our big manufacturing plants and industries over the past 20 years or so. In the same time successive Governments have encouraged the transition to a more high-tech service oriented economy but a reality of the modern world is that service industries do not create wealth in the country that provides the service. In the 1950's the UKs manufacturing sector accounted for almost 50% of our GDP; today it is less than  15% and to make matters worse those industries (steel, aluminium, ship building, automobiles, aerospace, construction, etc) are almost all owned by foreign companies. What's the significance of foreign ownership? It makes it more likely that UK factories will be closed in order to save jobs in the companys home country and our lax laws make it easier for foreign companies to lay UK workers off than for UK businesses to do that in other countries.

Providing short-term aid to JLR or their suppliers is a prudent fiscal measure and will certainly cost less in the long run that letting companies (many of which are small and highly specialised with ageing skilled workers) go to the wall. Skills lost now will, almost certainly, be lost forever as we haven't had any real engineering apprenticeships for more than a decade so there are no young semi-skilled workers ready to step up to the plate as we recover from the recession.

Tata is a huge conglomerate but it is no more recession proof than anyone else. Their share values have taking the same hammering as Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes, et al. Hell, even Toyota have announced losses for this year! Having first hand experience of working with Tata right up until a couple of months ago I would say they are an honourable company and they will come up with the promised funds for JLR as and when their finances permit. I have a contract to carry out research work for their steel division here in the UK (used to Corus and British Steel before that) which has been put on hold. I am assured the contract will be honoured sometime in 2009 and, as they've never let me down before, I'm happy to believe that. Mind you, they won't get any work done until I see the colour of their money  :-$

As for Tata sponsoring Ferarri ... well there's not much difference between a Tata and a Fiat is there?

[Range Rover Blues]

Skills lost now will, almost certainly, be lost forever as we haven't had any real engineering apprenticeships for more than a decade so there are no young semi-skilled workers ready to step up to the plate as we recover from the recession.

Hence all the money being thrown at the engineering diploma

[Manicminer]

Slightly off topic. Copied off the web somewhere.

We anticipate than the unfolding global systemic crisis will experience in March 2009 a new tipping point of similar magnitude to the September 2008 panic. "National governments and international institutions only have three months left to prepare themselves to the next blow, one that could go along severe risks of social chaos. The countries which are not properly equipped to cope with a surge in unemployment and major risks on pensions will be seriously destabilized by this new public awareness."

"Contrary to the dominant stance today (coming from those experts who denied the fact that a crisis was coming up three years ago, who denied that it was global two years ago, and who denied the fact that it was systemic six months ago), we anticipate that the minimum duration of the decanting phase of the crisis is 3 years. It shall be finished neither in spring 2009, nor in summer 2009, nor at the beginning of 2010. It is only towards the end of 2010 that the situation will start stabilizing again and improving a little in some regions of the world, i.e. Asia and the Eurozone, as well as in countries producing energy, mineral and food commodities. Elsewhere, it will continue; in particular in the US and UK, and in all the countries depending on their economy, were the duration could approximate a decade. In fact these countries should not expect any real return to growth before 2018."

"In March 2009, when pension fund managers, pensioners and governments will become simultaneously aware of the fact that the crisis is there to last, that it coincides with the baby-boomer generation’s age of retirement and that the markets will not resume their 2007 levels until many long years, chaos will flood this sector and governments will reach the moment when they will be compelled to nationalize all these funds. And Argentina, who took this decision a few months ago already, will appear a pioneer

[carbore]

Its a shame that we have run down our manufacturing and thats why "the City" is so important to the UK. As we now buy most of our stuff from abroad we are sending all our money away, its only the city that brings money back in as Rich Forieghn industrialists "trust" the UK finance market more than their own, so all those city boys we love to hate are pulling back all the money and bringing it back. I don't like it, but I think its the truth.

I really wish we can have a buy British campaign but unfortunately most people will always buy cheapest (Made in China) and would rather buy 5 items of poor quality that last 2 months than something really well made that lasts for ever. Its always quantity over quality. Dont even think of the environmental cost of all that junk.

And another rant, we have hammered UK industry on H&S and constant letters to the paper about "Dirty Factories" and the UK Employment laws (e.g. Employer=Welfare state)  and so it all gets shipped of to China where the employees get abused, pollution is rampant and the CO2 still warms the plant, but as its miles away we don't care and ist is nice and cheap in Tesco.

Shops are full of rubbish "Gifts" designed for people who dont know what to buy and dont need anythign anyway. Once I asked for a torque wrench and axle stands for Christmas and was told that was "boring", fortunately I have educated members of my family not to buy anything gifty.

[SteveGoodz]

Its a shame that we have run down our manufacturing and thats why "the City" is so important to the UK. As we now buy most of our stuff from abroad we are sending all our money away, its only the city that brings money back in as Rich Forieghn industrialists "trust" the UK finance market more than their own, so all those city boys we love to hate are pulling back all the money and bringing it back. I don't like it, but I think its the truth.

Unfortunately, the City doesn't create wealth .. it just shifts it around from place to place. As any economist (aside from those currently working for the Government) will tell you, wealth is only generated when you create something that is sold to someone else. You are right that foreign industrialists trust the City more than almost any other financial market but we're only holding their money while they find something else (and somewhere else) to spend it on.

The new(ish) Engineering Diplomas are a step in the right direction but there aretwo fundamental issues that no Government can oversome. Firstly, graduates won't ente the workforce until too late and secondly engineering isn't "cool" so the numbers enroling are insufficient. How many teenagers leaving school want to spend the next 50 years getting their hands dirty for not much more money than a bus driver gets?

Jeez! This subject makes me depressed  :(

[Range Rover Blues]

Actually Steve, without realising it you have hit the biggest problem with engineering in the UK.  I worked as an engineer for the first half of my career, and very ralrey did I ever go to work not in a suite.  Engineering isn't about weilding spanners and getting greasy, it's about designing stuff.

On the continent and engineer has the same cudos as an architect, as a doctor even, in the Uk everyone thinks I'm a grease monkey.

I'm not putting anyone down here, but there is a genuine need for the brightest and the best to consider engineering as an alternative to medicine and finance.

Trouble is, ask a 13 year old to sign up to be an engineering student for a decade and they'll run a mile.  Maths and Physics will take you anywhere (see them adverts) so why tie yourself down at an early age?

As for the salary, well you can live on it ;)  Perhaps not the everyday but 10 years ago I knew a toolmaker who was paying £35/hour to his patternamkers and they were still being "poached" by F1 related businesses.  Chances are most pitcrew have a degree of some sort.  It's a proffesion and most engineers I know earn a proffesional wage.