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THE INVESTOR
25TH ANNIVERSARY
A
MG Rover, the last
remaining British-owned volume car
manufacturer, went into administration
following the collapse of its proposed
deal with Shanghai Automotive Industry
Corporation.A 2006 report by the
National Audit O ce on the role the
government played in the collapse
concluded that it caused the direct loss
of almost 6,000 jobs in the company’s
Longbridge plant in theWest Midlands.
It also said that £170 million was spent
supporting employers, suppliers and the
local community, and recommended
better contingency planning in future
such events.The business was eventually
sold to NanjingAutomobile from China.
Although much of the operation was
transferred to China, production did
resume at Longbridge, albeit on a small
scale.At the time of its collapse, MG
Rover was owned by PhoenixVenture
Holdings, which acquired it from BMW.
A government inquiry concluded that
the four executives had given themselves
‘unreasonably large’ payouts totalling
£42 million as the company collapsed.
6,000 jobs go as deal to save
carmaker fell through
Steve Jobs launches the rst
generation iPhone,and so
begins a generation’s devotion
to everything Apple
ROVER
ANDOUT
MOBILE
MASTER
ANGELA MERKEL
TAKES OFFICE...
GERHARD SCHRÖDER HANDS
POWER OVER TO ANGELA
MERKEL FOLLOWING HIS
2005 ELECTION DEFEAT
Global social
media giant
launches
TWTTR
LAUNCH
On 15 July
the social media
platform allowing
users to post messages
of no more than
140 characters
officially launched.
Originally called ‘twttr’,
the name was
subsequently renamed
‘Twitter’ once the
owners purchased
the ‘twitter.com’
domain name.
The platform’s rapid
growth in user
numbers was a feature
of the late ‘noughties’,
with more than
320 million active
users currently
tweeting each month
1
.
J
1 adweek.com, April 2016; 2 statista.com, December 2016