KPMG Demand may halt production of Discovery.

[CarZee]

The company who makes the chassis for the Land Rover Discovery, UPF-Thompsom, has gone into liquidation.

The liquidators, KPMG, are demanding an upfront payment of £45M from Land Rover (Ford) to 'secure the future' of their supplier.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1759000/1759078.stm

Personally, I take umbridge at the way pirhanas like KPMG see fit to hold a company to ransom like this, effectively endangering not only the future of the Disco, but the jobs of a shedload of people at Land Rover and their other suppliers of Disco parts..

I took the opportunity to go to KPMG's website and tell Mr Mark Orton this using their contact form.

Maybe I'm adressing the wrong audience, but perhaps we should all do the same:

www.kpmg.co.uk/kpmg/uk/ContactUS/contactus_entryform.cfm

cheers

[CarZee]

All valid comments and worthy debate.

Whilst I know that Ford are enormous and have a Market-Cap greater than the GDP of much of the 3rd world and are not the most scrupulous of businesses themselves, my personal concern in that a short-termist decision taken by a nonce enthroned in KPMG at Canary Wharf (or wherever) is threatening jobs which might well not be recreated in this country after the downturn ends.

The Land Rover plant has just had a big win in keeping the contract to build the vehicles in this country. Now that is all under threat.

[CarZee]

quote:very short sighted KPMG!

And that's why I passed on my rant to the bloke at KPMG via their website - perhaps you should do the same...

and I don't think it'd be too difficult to work out his email address either..

[CarZee]

quote:I am now firmly on Land Rover's side after seeing a quote from the KPMG guy which basically said no-one else makes these components so we have LR over a barrel so they should pay up.

Can you post a link to that or tell us where you heard/read it ?
cheers

[CarZee]

quote:I find it very hard to believe that LandRover (or Ford) cannot simply tell them to stick it up their arses and get the chassis made somewhere else

That was my thought too, but a bloke from Land Rover said on R4 yesterday that during the time it would take to retool etc they'd have to lay people off. You'd have thought there'd be another company willing to take on the chassis work though..