Tata Motors has acquired Ford's British marquees Jaguar and Land Rover for $2.30 billion in an all cash deal, sealing a deal that it pursued for nine months. Under the deal, Tata would continue to source engine from Ford, which would be paying about $600 million toward the pension liabilities of Jaguar-Land Rover employees.
American carmaker Ford is expected to announce on Wednesday the sale of its premium British car brands Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata Motors for a consideration of about $2 billion. Local media reported that the agreement will include a pledge by Ford to contribute to the two brands' pension fund, and by Tata to continue buying engines from Ford both sensitive points with trade unions.
Apart from SBI, the consortium will include leading entities like Citibank, Standard Chartered, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ and Mizuho Financial Group, a source closely connected to the development told PTI. The country's largest lender is also in talks with two-three public sector banks to be a part of the consortium, the source said. The company reported a loss of $12.7 billion for the fiscal ended December 30, 2006.
India's Tata Motors could sign a deal with Ford to buy the US carmaker's Jaguar and Land Rover marques as early as next Wednesday or Thursday, people familiar with the deal said on Tuesday.
Tata Motors, which is announcing its results January 30, is likely to end 2008-09 with around Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) less cash mainly because sales of commercial vehicles, which account for about 60 per cent of its revenues, have dropped sharply.
In London alone there are more than 160 multinational Indian companies. If businesses owned by persons of Indian origin are included, there are over 10,000 Indian owned businesses in London, turning over 7.5 billion pounds, representing 5 per cent of the city's economy.
Tata Motors, the country's largest automobile company, may tap its vehicle loans to raise funds for working capital and refinancing of loans for Jaguar and Land Rover acquisitions, investors and analysts said.
Following it negotiations with Ford Motors for the aquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover, Tata Motors has been put under credit watch.
This rating action follows the announcement by Ford Motor Company (Ford, which has a rating-B3/Stable) naming Tata Motors the preferred buyer for Ford's luxury Jaguar and Land Rover car brands.
Barely days before it launches the world's cheapest car, Tatas were on Wednesday named the preferred bidder for Ford's British luxury brands -- Jaguar and Land Rover.
DLF is paying $200m for a controlling stake in Amanresorts. The deal comes at a time when Indian automotive companies Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra are bidding for Ford's luxury Jaguar and Land Rover marques.
Tata Motors, which bought Jaguar and Land Rover, said it will reconsider its plan to raise as much as $600 million from overseas markets due to the global credit crisis. The decision also follows a 34 per cent drop in the company's second-quarter profit owing to foreign currency losses and slowing sales.
Tata Motors has sold one Jaguar and Land Rover model a day since it launched the marque brands in India just under a month ago -- on June 28. But that's enough to satisfy the company and has, in fact, come as a surprise to many market experts.
While declining to comment on the intended takeover bid for JLR by Tata Motors, another group company, Myers said the relationship was close to four years old.
Now you can buy Jaguars and Land Rovers from dedicated showrooms in India. Indian owned or not, they represent some of the best sports cars and sports utility vehicles.
Ratan Tata, the 71-year-old Indian industrial patriarch whose Tata group now owns Jaguar and Land Rover, had personal experience of the importance of Jaguar's "heritage"during a visit to the British company in mid-July.
The India foray of the two brands, which debuted in 1922 and 1948, respectively, has been hastened by their new Indian owner, Tata Motors, which took over in 2008 from Ford Motor Company of the US. The spokesperson said Tata Motors would be the distributor of these brands in India.
"Like Russia and China, JLR would be exploring the Indian market also. A team will be coming to India to study the market," Tata Motors Managing director Ravi Kant told analysts in a conference call. He, however, said the company was not expecting big numbers from the two brands in India.
Tata Motors, India's largest commercial vehicle maker, has postponed plans for an overseas equity issue and sale of investments to repay the $3 billion bridge loan it took in June last year to acquire the Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford.
A year after the Tata group took over the two of Britain's most iconic automobile brands, Jaguar and Land Rover, it is faced with newer and bigger challenges than it would have expected when it paid $2.3 billion to Ford for the acquisitions on March 26, 2008.
The appliance maker seeks to buy Motorola's ailing cell-phone division to complement its telecom business; critics say it's not a good fit
Coventry-based Nick Seale of the Warwick Manufacturing Group believes that the takeover will also be of global and historic significance. Seale said: "When the history of the motor industry is written, they will look back on this event as one of the key turning points.
Just hours after returning to Mumbai, Ravi Kant, managing director, and C Ramakrishnan, CFO of Tata Motors addressed the press on a conference call. Excerpts from the call.
Tata Motors is expected to sign the agreement to buy the two Ford-owned luxury marques, Jaguar and Land Rover in the next few days. Tatas are expected to pay $3 billion for the coveted brands. According to sources, Tata Motors, India's largest auto making company, has agreed to most of the clauses put forward by Ford and Unite (workers union of the two brands), including the condition that Tata Motors will not shift the manufacturing facilities of the two brands.
The management of luxury carmaker Jaguar is 'entirely relaxed' about the prospects of Indian conglomerate Tata Group taking over the brand along with Land Rover. Earlier, this month, Ford had named Tata Motors, which is part of the Tata Group, as the preferred bidder for its British marquees -- Jaguar and Land Rover, but a final decision for the sale is yet to be taken.
Sunday Times says top European official in sight. The current chief executive is Geoff Polities, an Australian car industry veteran.
The report quoted unnamed sources at Land Rover as saying, "It is definitely Tata. There is one final meeting and so long as there is no last minute hitches, which are not expected, then an announcement will be made on Friday." The final details would be worked out in the next six weeks, it added. The report also quoted a union official as saying that Mahindra's bid fell flat because of links to a private equity firm as the Indian firm was working with Apollo.
With the US economy in a downturn, it could be a while before the Jaguar and Land Rover business turns around. For the first half of 2008, JLR has posted losses of $383 million on sales of $ 7.07 billion, a disclosure that saw the Tata Motors stock fall 5 per cent on September 23.
Tata Motors made waves when it bought the Jaguar and Land Rover brands. Test your knowledge about the erstwhile owner of these brands -- Henry Ford.
Tata Motors has succeeded in securing a $3bn banking facility for its purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor, which should clear the way for the deal to close next week. Tata's ability to raise the money in spite of the turmoil on debt markets represents a vote of confidence in the Indian company and removes one of the last main obstacles to the deal.
American auto giant Ford is likely to retain a stake and continue supplying engines and some of the components for Jaguar and Land Rover, even after the sale of the two British luxury brands, media reports said in the United Kingdom.
A key point to understand is that Ford is selling these brands not because they are in their worst trouble ever, but simply because of Ford's overall crisis - it lost more than $12.6 billion in 2006 - is pushing CEO Alan Mulally to raise money to fulfill his declared ambition to restore the mass-market Ford business to health.
India's corporate honchos spent a considerable time and energy this year at deal tables and executed over thousand transactions involving sale or purchase of equity stakes in their companies. On an average, every single day of 2007 saw about three deals being announced. This included a total of 1,047 merger and acquisitions as well as private equity deals for a total value of $68.32 billion (about Rs 2,75,000 crore).
People close to Indian carmakers Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, and the buy-out group One Equity Partners, said on Tuesday that they expected Ford to respond imminently to their revised offers made last week.
Ford Motor Co on Wednesday said it expects the sale of its two European marques Jaguar and Land Rover, in which India's Tata Motors has evinced interest, to be through either by this year-end or early next year.
Ford said its Jaguar F1 team would pull out at the end of the 2004 season and its Cosworth engine company was also up for sale.
An Indian ownership of Jaguar, one of the two luxury cars that the US car maker Ford is selling off, is not acceptable to the American dealers of the brand. Tata group and Mahindra & Mahindra are two of the front-runners for acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover, along with a private equity bidder, One Equity that is led by a former Ford CEO.
Tata Motors is seeking an image makeover with the curvaceous hatchback, Zica.
Tata Motor's owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Tuesday reported a 68 per cent increase in retail sales for the first quarter ended June 30 at 124,537 units as compared with the same period of the previous fiscal, reflecting the continuing recovery in demand from the COVID 19 pandemic. The company had retailed 74,067 units in the April-June quarter of 2020-21. However, wholesales, in particular, were lower than demand would have permitted due to semiconductor supply issues affecting the global auto industry, JLR noted in a statement.
The branding exercise is estimated cost Rs 100-200 crore to the Tata Group.
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