It's now very nearly nine years since MG Rover closed amid debts of more than £1 billion, with the loss of over 6,000 jobs directly and countless thousands more in the supply chain.
The world has moved on considerably since the last volume manufacturer at Longbridge hit the rocks in April 2005. The likes of LDV, HP Sauce, Hovis and Daw Mill Colliery, among others, have followed MG Rover into oblivion while Jaguar Land Rover, conversely, has become the biggest 海角视频 industrial success story of recent times.
Cadbury’s has been taken over by an American owner, along with Aston Villa. Birmingham City has been bought by the Chinese, as were the remnants of MG Rover. New Labour is a distant memory and we are now nearly four years into a Coalition Government still struggling with austerity programmes and bleak budgetary deficits.
READ MORE: {}
In short, the world is a very different place to that dark day when the last MG Rover model spluttered off the Longbridge assembly line and the 海角视频’s most famous car factory was mothballed for several years until MG 海角视频 was finally born.
But the passing of the years, along with an entire Government and another large slice of West Midland manufacturing, hasn’t stopped the not-insignificant sum of £23 million-plus, raised directly from the wreckage of Longbridge, from slowly gathering dust in a bank account.
The curious case of the MGR Capital cash – a puzzler which would test the intellectual patience of the original Sherlock Holmes, let alone the shiny new one on the BBC – has exercised the minds of the former Phoenix directors, liquidators, pension regulators, trustees and former workers for the best part of a decade, and shows little tangible sign of any conclusion soon. The facts of the MGR Capital nest egg are these. The company was set up under the Phoenix project as MG Rover’s finance and lease loan book, and was one of the few enterprises from the whole Longbridge car crash to generate profits before the factory closed.
Liquidators Begbies Traynor were able to raise a total sum of £23,232,000 when the assets of MGR Capital were realised following the demise of MG Rover, and that cash pile remains apparently untouched to this very day.
As long ago as August 2010, liquidator Paul Stanley told the Post: “The timescale is in the hands of the Pensions Regulator. They have advised that they may have a claim, although I am struggling with the concept. I cannot reject the claim until I know what the claim is. Because they have not put a claim in, I cannot reject it.”
Most Read
Various deadlines for claim submissions and correspondence between the parties have come and gone since August 2010, and it now seems that the Pensions Regulator is currently undertaking some sort of further investigation in connection with this extraordinary matter.
“The Pensions Regulator has an ongoing investigation regarding the potential use of its powers in respect of a MG Rover pension scheme. We are unable to comment further on the specifics of this at this time,” said the Regulator in a statement.
The issue had been complicated by the fact that MGR Capital was ring-fenced by the Longbridge directors and not part of the now-infamous pledge by former chairman John Towers that assets from parent group Phoenix Venture Holdings worth up to £30 million would be donated to a Trust Fund for workers.
That aim – a genuine, if ill-fated, attempt by the Phoenix Four to help the redundant workforce – fell foul of a claim by taxpayer bailout bank HBOS, who successfully swallowed up £12 million for monies owed for work at Longbridge. A subsequent appeal by the ex-Phoenix directors to the High Court was lost.
But long after the hopes of a Trust Fund for ex-workers died in the High Court, the MGR Capital proceeds remain the subject of an apparently interminable ding-dong battle between the liquidator and the Pensions Regulator.
Ironically, if the Regulator’s claim eventually fails, one of the beneficiaries would again be HBOS, which owned 50 per cent of MGR Capital. The others would be ex-Phoenix directors and MGR Capital shareholders, Peter Beale and John Edwards, were they to exercise their right to claim the money. It is thought that the two ex-directors could be in line for around £4 million each after capital gains tax, a potentially explosive scenario following the Trust Fund debacle.
But no money can be distributed to anyone – HBOS, the ex-Phoenix directors or the Pensions Regulator – until the liquidation process is complete. And any distribution by Begbies Traynor is on hold while the Pensions Regulator’s investigation continues. Confused?
Don’t miss
What cannot be denied in this sorry saga is that not a single ex-worker at MG Rover ever got a penny from the ill-fated Trust Fund. What also cannot be denied is that those 6,000-plus people played an integral part for five years in a business which spawned MGR Capital, and later realised more than £23 million worth of assets.
MGR Capital was, for a time, just as much a part of Longbridge as John Towers and the other directors, the unions or even Lord Austin’s old office. It was also, unusually for Longbridge, a profitable venture and its £23 million legacy does not deserve to be the subject of endless claims and counter-claims from bankers, accountants and regulatory bodies.
The banks and the accountants have picked over the carcass of MG Rover for nearly a decade, and continue to do so.
Meanwhile, thousands of ex-workers are left to ruefully reflect on what might have been.