Press Report : Managers seek LDV vans buyout

Jonathan Guthrie, Financial Times, 23rd February, 2009

A management team hopes to buy LDV, the troubled Birmingham vanmaker that ceased production in December. It is seeking a bridging loan from the government for an unspecified sum to complete the transaction.

LDV employs 850 people in manufacturing and a further 1,200 staff in its dealer network. The Press Association suggested that LDV was the unnamed plant that union leaders had said faced closure, with the loss of 6,000 jobs across the supply chain.

LDV is owned by GAZ, the automotive group controlled by Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and an acquaintance of both Lord Mandelson, the business minister, and George Osborne, shadow chancellor.

[Source: Financial Times]