Profits? What profits?

By Alex Singleton | 19 April 2005

On Rover Group's website circa 1998, the company boasted that it was "the UK's third largest exporter". It may well be that a large chunk of those exports were from Land Rover, now part of Ford, but let's ignore that for now. Simply selling products overseas is not necessarily a good thing: selling them profitably is what's important. In the past 35 years, Rover Group (aka British Leyland, Austin Rover and MG Rover), has hardly ever made a profit - the last time was in 1994.

It is sometimes argued that it is all very well having companies in Britain employing people, but unless they are British owned, we do not get the advantage of the profits. Should we worry, therefore, that Jaguar, Land Rover, Leyland Trucks, and Mini are owned by foreign companies? In the long run, will we be worse off?

Not at all. In the case of the car industry, the British-owned manufacturers were not good at making profits. British people still own shares in car companies: there are surely British investors in Ford. Once a company is floated on a stock exchange, it ceases to be an entirely British, Japanese or American company.

British people do better by investing around the world according to the profit motive rather than trying to invest 'patriotically'. When British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) sold Rover Group in 1994, it concluded that it was likely to make more money investing in its core business rather than in car manufacturing. If British companies and individuals direct their investments to where the investment is most profitable, surely that's a good thing?

No one has come forward and tried to buy up the bankrupt MG Rover in its complete form. Investors know that it will not bring a return. After all, the British government poured billions into Rover and sold it for a tiny £150m. BMW also poured billions into it and Rover didn't repay that investment. With a world oversupply of cars, the industry in general is not a good investment prospect. Even America's General Motors is losing money; this month Moody's cut GM's debt rating to the lowest investment grade. So when people say the British should own a car manufacturer, what they are suggesting is a really unattractive prospect.