Directors Peter Beale and John Edwards of the vilified Phoenix Four are in line for a massive multi-million pound Christmas bonus from the remnants of the Longbridge empire, it was revealed today. The two former Longbridge bosses, who with fellow directors John Towers and Nick Stephenson have already enriched themselves to the tune of around £9 million each, will be entitled to another huge cash windfall next month.
West Midlands car industry activists are poring over the fine detail of the government report into the collapse of MG Rover to establish whether there are grounds to bring a civil action against the so-called Phoenix Four, the executives who bought the car company from BMW for £10 in May 2000. MG Rover watchers are said to be angry at the extent to which the Phoenix Four benefited personally while overseeing the demise of Britain’s last volume car manufacturer. They believe the report, compiled after a four-year investigation by two government inspectors, has opened the door to civil action. “Company law on fiduciary responsibility is complex and unclear,” said Nick Matthews, an academic at Coventry University and car industry analyst for 15 years. “The inspectors agree that it is uncertain, particularly in respect of the deal to buy MGR Capital. […]
Whilst the Phoenix Four – via their media spokesperson – engage in an a somewhat unseemly public spat over who was responsible for the collapse of MG Rover four years ago with the loss of 6,300 jobs at Longbridge and several thousand more in the wider economy, we need to remember who really lost out here. I doubt if it was the Phoenix Four, who did rather well out of the whole affair – after all their remuneration, pensions and other benefits ran into the millions. Rather, it is the workers and their families, who deserve some answers as to what went so wrong at MG Rover under Phoenix’s stewardship. Lord Mandelson’s statement earlier this week that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is to investigate the circumstances surrounding the collapse MG Rover back in 2005 did genuinely come as a […]
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