Fraught four-month-long negotiation between Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover and the United Kingdom government over a loan guarantee ended in an anti-climax on Tuesday, with the Mumbai-headquartered automobile maker announcing that it has secured loans from commercial banks and would not need any support from the UK government.
Tata Motors has roped in international consultants Roland Berger Strategy Consultants (based in Munich) and KPMG to help its British car brands Jaguar-Land Rover trim costs and help manage cash flow.
Tata Motors on Friday reported an 84 per cent jump in its global sales at 74,707 units for December 2008, compared to the corresponding month in 2008. The company also posted 137 per cent surge in the sale of its commercial vehicles at 37,326 units in December 2009, it said in a statement. During the month under review, it sold 16,247 units of passenger vehicles, up by 53 per cent, against the same month previous year, it added.
Responding to a question on whether Tata-owned JLR was in talks with the UK government for a bailout package, Mandelson said it was too early to judge whether the state would be willing to help Jaguar Land Rover, which employs around 15,000 workers.
In an interview published in the Sunday Times on Sunday, Ratan Tata admitted with hindsight that he might have gone too far too fast, but that nobody saw the economic recession coming.
Tata Motors, India's largest commercial vehicle maker, is in the process of raising Rs 5,000 crore through a bond issue to refinance the remaining $ 2 billion (Rs 10,000 crore) bridge loan it took to acquire Jaguar and Land Rover.
The likes of Microsoft and Cohesity have offered crore plus salaries to some students.
In yet another major Indian takeover, Religare, a financial services company owned by prominent businessmen Malvinder and Shivinder Singh bought London's oldest stockbroker, Hichens, Harrison & Co on Friday. The deal is seen as another example of India's growing economic clout overseas. Two weeks ago, Tata Motors bought the prestigious Jaguar and Land rover models from Ford.
Top Indian businessmen are increasingly making investments abroad. They are eyeing acquisitions abroad for a number of reasons including global reach and international market penetration. But the Indian business environment is also a chief cause. Many businessmen regard Indian biz scene stifling & not open enough for free growth. The likes of Vijay Mallya and the Ruias have therefore become technically become non-resident Indians even while they run large businesses in India.
Industrial conglomerate Tata group has spent $ 133 million in advisory fees related to various buyouts in the last two years, according to data compiled by leading global financial information provider Dealogic. The group has acquired as many as 56 businesses with a total volume of $ 20.6 billion in the last two years, accounting for 82 per cent of their total merger & acquisition volume. Since the year 2002 the Tata group has made as many as 106 acquisitions valued at $ 2mn.
Indian high commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee has asked the British companies, based in Birmingham and other towns in the West Midlands, to expand and avail of opportunities offered by India.
JLR sees job cut if the situation does not improve.
Sunday Times reports Tata Group has agreed in principle to invest pound 100 million alongside refinancing.
After months of negotiations, Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover is likely to get approval for a loan of pound 270 million (about Rs 2,000 crore) from the European Investment Bank on April 7, BBC reported on Saturday quoting official sources.
Bajaj Auto's margins are expected to expand 100 basis points, as volumes have recovered.
The two iconic brands are also developing hybrid engines for use in future models of JLR. Two British marquee had made a loss of over Rs 1,777.35 crore or Rs 17.77 billion (before interest, exceptional items and tax) in 2008-09 due to global meltdown, while the income from JLR sales stood at Rs 39,270.70 crore (Rs 392.7 billion). It had laid off over 2,200 staff.
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.
Jaguar X-TYPE, an 8-yr-old range, constituted nearly a fourth of annual production till now.
A JLR spokesperson said this offer will apply to nearly 6,000 of its 14,500 employees who are categorised as salaried employees. The rest of the workers are paid weekly. He further said 25 per cent of those to whom this offer was made have already accepted it.
The list of '10 Cars That Changed The World' also features the Ford Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Trabant, the Porsche 911, the Ford Mustang, the AMC Eagle, the Jeep Cherokee, the Dodge Caravan and the Toyota Prius. 'These vehicles changed people's lifestyles and habits as well as automakers' long-term strategies. Some even changed governments,' the magazine said in an accompanying report.
The cash injection from Tata has bought ministers breathing space to respond to demands for multi-billion-pound loan guarantees from the car sector. Alistair Darling, chancellor, is understood to be concerned that any state support does not set too generous a precedent for other sectors.
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.
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.
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.
For years, critics termed Tata's vehicle business as a millstone around the neck. But Group chairman Ratan Tata on Wednesday flattened their theory by taking the automobile venture to a new plane with the acquisition of British luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover.
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.
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.
Despite what the Nano can do to the country's automobile market, its ability to transform Tata Motors' financials will be limited, says Shyamal Majumdar.
Tata's comments come a little over two weeks after JLR management and its workers agreed to a two-year pay freeze, subject to no compulsory layoffs for the next two years. This is also the first time the Tata chairman has made a direct public appeal to the UK government for credit support.
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.
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.
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.
The company is still short of over Rs 4500 crore (Rs 45 billion) to refinance the debt which is due before June 2 this year. The company had planned to raise the fund for refinancing through three routes. It planned to raise about Rs 4200 crore through rights issues which it managed after the issue devolved on underwriters in October as the stock prices were tumbling globally following the economic crisis.
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.
"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.
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JLR on Monday launched a new variant of Jaguar XF sedan for Rs 45.12 lakh
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