Been done to death but:
Last night I caught the last 10 mins of ITV news where there was an extended slot on Rover. In particular what went wrong, where all the money went etc. Quite interesting.
Part 2 is on Friday evening, if anyone's interested.
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Saw it. Nothing we haven't heard before. The only one with a realistic plan was Moulton (as I believe I said at the time) and the Phoenix mob were a political fix.
As a side issue I think Vlad the Impaler is an excellent deadpan style presenter and would like to see him do more things.
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What Rover needed was to embrace Michael Hammer's Business Process Re-engineering philosophy. It certainly sorted out the automotive products company for which I used to work.
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L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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"Vald the Impaler": Would that be Quentin Wilson? If so, yes he is an excellent presenter.
A lot of the content was new to me. I didn't know that they squandered money on motor racing (mainly the entertainment), and that when they negotiated with the Chinese, they were pie-eyed, and the Chinese were sober. It makes me wonder if they ever realised the responsibility they had.
Leif
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Yet more examples of what may be perfectly legal can also morally stink.
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When your business plan appears to be personal enrichment on a large scale PDQ, who cares about the real world? Of course they may have intended to flood the UK with 4.6litre V8 Rovers doing 20mpg as a valid marketing plan...
madf
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I think the big question is whether they were trading when insolvent towards the end, which is illegal.
Given the amounts owed to dealers and creditors it's an open and shut case!
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I don't think these guys could believe their luck when they got the nod from HMG to complete the deal. Certainly the R&D guys must have sat their with their jaws on the floor when the board said "Yeah, go on then, build the X-Power and whilst you're at it, why not make the body from carbon fibre?"
It's been one brief but frenetic party at MGR, with the board fully aware that they were on borrowed time. When the report is made public those guys had better have their passports about them as I doubt they'll be safe anywhere in this country.
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Worked for one company that went bankrupt. Situation was monitored daily and when the lawyer said we had to pull the plug we did. Liquidator crawled all over it. We were clean. If the Phoenix mob crossed the line the liquidators will eat them alive, would be surprised if they were not taking constant legal advice on this point.
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ND,
I believe the foriegn boltholes are already in place.
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I believe the foriegn boltholes are already in place.
Shanghai perhaps?
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If they were trading when insolvent, HMG is going to look v. silly so expect some PR fuss at the same time as report to fuzzy up the issues...
madf
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Forget the PR fuzz, least of their worries. If they were trading whilst insolvent then the directors are personally liable for the debts of the company from that point and the liquidators work for the debt holders (which will include HMG but others as well) and it is their fidiciary duty to maximise the return to the debt holders.
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Quite right, and you don't have to prove fraudulent trading as they can be done for 'wrongful trading' under the Insolvency Act: it only has to be proved that directors had no realistic hope of paying the company's debts.
The trouble is that this comes down to the state of a person's mind, and I believe that successful imposition of personal liability is quite rare as directors hire clever lawyers and prove that they did have genuine hope of avoiding liquidation.
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In the "Tonight with Trevor McDonald" programme last night the Rover management were portrayed as totally incompetent wasters. Could they really have been that bad? However, presumably ITV made sure of the content of the programme before it was released for broadcast. I found the whole thing incredible.
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L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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The Tongiht programme is hardly a shining beacon of balanced reporting though, you only have to watch their reports on abductors prowling the internet and their other main gripe, binge drinking to see that they are good at giving a pretty one-sided view of things.
However, there probabtly is some truth in it, at the end of the day, they know they would get taken to court if they presented any facts that weren't true.
Blue
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And beware binge drinking abductors on the net they wil.............................................
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