... for 2.3 billion dollars.

Fancy that. I wonder if Volvo will ever "go Indian" ?

Tom

TATA was english owned in the late 1800's lol
when it was started.

http://www.tata.com/


it is sad how england has nothing now...



Cheers
will

England still has some things, like TVR, oh no their Russian, Tetly, no TATA as well, Briish Steel, no TATA got them as well...

Well at least stuff is still made here like HP sauce, oh no that moved to the Netherlands, all Aston Martin's, except they're going to make one of their models abroad...

Hmm, your right

Why can't we own/make stuff any more...

We are so lazy and greedy that we have destroyed our ability to compete, unless our goverments soon do something about it there is soon no more UK, there will be British province of India

Just same here, russians have bought HUGE amount of land, companies are owned by outsiders and so on.

England hasn't had British Steel for a long time, ever since (Austin or Morris, can't remember...) bought them, swallowed everthing became BL and it all went wrong

We still have the good companies... Noble, Ariel etc

Britain traded in manufacturing capacity for the financial services industry - We're dependent on bankers, and the writing's on the wall for that little racket...

I know it's nothing new Chris, but I couldn't think of anything else at the time. How'd I forget MG going Chinese...

It's true, we're becoming a service nation, with some small specialised manufacturing. Obviously this globalisation means we're focusing on our strengths to focus on the most profitable areas, and it's just sentimentality affecting our views on the loss of the old industry's... Still, it's always sad to loose a business abroad, though lets not forget Ford is American. Jaguar and Land Rover have not been British for a fair while.

its the heratige that bothers me...what have we to be proud of now?

we depend on other countrys for almost every thing...tanks cars guns...lol

And food.

So much of it comes from abroad these days. Sure it's a tad cheaper, but you often loose quality, it's worse for the environment, and our countryside disappears...

This may sound a bit simplistic and I am not being racist ,

but how come a country that has a conglomerate with a profile like this.

The Tata Group
is one of India's oldest, largest and most respected business conglomerates.

The Group's businesses are spread over seven business sectors.

It comprises 98 companies and operates in six continents.

It employs some 2,89,500 people and collectively has a shareholder base of over 2.9 million and market capitalisation of $56.52 billion as on March 19, 2008.

and can afford

to spend 2.3 billion dollars on buying car companies


comes cap in hand to us every time they have a flood or famine,

perhaps tata should spend some of their billions on there own countries infrastructure.
like supplying decent clean water and medication to its people

India seemed to have a very very prominent class struture when I was out there, the rich are silly rich, and likewise for the poor. Tata like any company is there to make money, but without going into it I don't know what the tax struture that would be imposed upon them is. I find it hard to believe one company would change it all though, though it's doing a very good job by selling the Nano over there. I doubt Tata is managing to pay as little tax as Tesco is over here, with it's lawers able to restructure the company so that is pays silly little. A case of the rich able to stay rich? Certainly our tax system helped to break down the classes this country once had, with big companies making a mockery of it what hope is there?

With transport in India, the ammenaties that were unavailible before suddenly become possible. I'm interested to see whether the Nano helps to brings the middle class higher, the higher class lower and what it will do to the lower class.

As to what Britain does? Whilst a lot of things are made abroad, a lot of it is still designed by British engineers, they are very sought after. It's a shame our own country doesn't recorgnise this, an engineer in Germany would be treated like a Dr, not a washing machine repairman (not that I have issues with repairman, just 99% of the time they arn't engineers). A lot of things still are done here though, we have one of the biggest defense industries in the world, and we still have aero and auto. Just because a company isn't owned by a UK owner, things are still manufactured here, with most of it being designed and built here, like the mini/ honda random things/nissan (note I believe?) in Swindon/Swindon/Norf respectively. Airbus are sat over in Filton knocking out bits for the A380 along with a load of other projects...

Oh... ello, when did that turn into a rant.... sorry, I'll stop now!

I personally have no problems with "foreign" ownership of companies, that's the way the cookie crumbles in a globalised world. Does it matter whether it's an American, German or Indian company running Jaguar and LR? Not really ...

However, a fair bit of technology transfer goes on in these mega-conglomerates - BMW to (Land) Rover or from Ford to Jaguar. But Tata?? They're internationally famous for building "the cheapest car in the world" not really the kind of areas Jaguar and Land Rover were operating in.

A while back, a rumour went around Ford were going to sell Volvo to Kia. I would've publicly burned all my blue boxes in protest

Tom

trabitom99 wrote:A while back, a rumour went around Ford were going to sell Volvo to Kia. I would've publicly burned all my blue boxes in protest

Why? From the looks of things, new Kia's are turning out to be rather good

SteveP wrote:Why? From the looks of things, new Kia's are turning out to be rather good

Yes, unfortunately

I'm a bit conservative when it comes to car manufacturers I'm afraid. Even though it's romantic nonsense, I like a bit of tradition, GP wins, 1930's Nürburgring successes and all that kind of stuff, in a car maker ...

Maybe I'll get to liking Kia in 50 years' time

Tom

germ wrote:we depend on other countrys for almost every thing...tanks cars guns...lol

Guns are one of the few things we're still pretty good at making. BAE systems owns Heckler-Koch of MP5 fame. Then we have Hawk Aircraft, a large stake in Eurofighter, Chieftain tank is a dependable export too. And then there's all the black ops tech we export all over the place which you don't tend to hear very much about...

redline wrote:perhaps tata should spend some of their billions on there own countries infrastructure. like supplying decent clean water and medication to its people

What you have to remember is that India is run by gangsters - no really. I was talking to an Indian Doctor the other day and he reckons about 90% of all their MPs are gangsters. The reason for this is that people who get elected to parliament become absolved of all their crimes. It's a get out of jail card, literally in some instances (people have ran, and been elected from their jail cell - with some help from their friends obviously). Gangsters are usually firm believers in the powers of free enterprise over public services