Santander set to win battle for high-street domination

• RBS's sell-off of 318 branches to take place within 24 hours
• Acquisition will see Santander overtake HSBC
• Spanish bank expected to drop Williams & Glyn's brand ...

Guardian  02 Aug 2010    Banking Commission    Fractional Reserve Banking

Takeover code tweaks won't affect corporate behaviour

Mergers and Acquisitions

Hong Kong tycoon buys up UK electricity networks

Hong Kong's business “Superman” Li Ka-Shing is paying £5.8bn for energy giant EDF’s 100,000 miles of the UK’s electricity network.

The ... Asian billionaire first approached EDF in March, beating off a range of competitors including the National Grid, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and several Canadian pension funds for the UK network group, which includes cables and substations supplying around eight million households and employing nearly 5,000 people.

The "irrevocable offer" from Mr Li's consortium ... remains open until 24 October.

According to EDF, the offer constitutes a 27 per cent premium to the regulated asset value for the regulated electricity networks, and a multiple of 8.1 times 2010 earnings estimates for the total business.

The French group aims to present the plans for commercial cooperation with the Cheung Kong consortium in the UK to its European Works Council in early September, before going to the board for a final decision.

If the deal goes ahead, the consortium will take control of three regional electricity networks covering London, the South-east and the East of England, providing nearly a quarter of all electrical power in the UK.

Alongside the regulated assets, the deal also covers EDF's non-regulated business, which has commercial contracts to deliver electricity to private sites ...

Independent  31 July 2010

Vince Cable bids to overhaul City takeover regime

Sold: a decade of UK infastructure assets changing hands

OFT launches stock-take into UK economic assets

International Power talks to test coalition stance on foreign takeovers

It's called 'giving away the family silver', Mrs T.

• Shares jump 10% on news of talks with France's GDF Suez
• International Power has six plants in UK
• Possible foreign takeover follows outcry over Kraft-Cadbury

A takeover by the French group would test the new coalition government's attitude to the takeover of British companies by foreign rivals following the public outcry over Kraft's swoop on Cadbury this year.

It also poses questions about the security of the UK's energy supplies as GDF is 35% owned by the French government.

International Power's plants would be the latest in a string of British infrastructure assets to enter foreign hands.

The Office of Fair Trading announced in May that it was launching a comprehensive stock-take of the country's economic infrastructure, to investigate whether consumers are being ripped off as many of these businesses have changed owner in the past decade.

Many utility companies are now owned by foreign groups. Few of the UK's household energy suppliers – Centrica and Scottish and Southern Energy – remain in British ownership, just over a decade after the market was opened up to full competition.

Almost half of all UK-listed companies targeted in takeover bids in the past two years have been bought by overseas buyers, reigniting the debate over foreign ownership of British firms.

Two years ago, for instance, French energy giant EDF agreed to buy nuclear power station operator British Energy in a £12.4bn deal ...

Guardian  19 July 2010

Hong Kong tycoon buys up UK electricity networks

Jewels of British industry at risk of falling into American hands

When do we join NAFTA?

American companies are preparing to launch daring takeover bids for a host of Britain's biggest corporate names – including BAE Systems and AstraZeneca – thanks to the weakness of the pound against the dollar.

Sterling has lost about a quarter of its value against the dollar in the last two-and-a-half years, and combined with the feeble recovery in the UK economy, British firms have become much cheaper for American suitors looking for a good deal.

Following the controversial takeover of Cadbury earlier this year by the US food giant Kraft, and the buyout of Gatwick Airport by an American private equity firm, analysts at Standard & Poor's predicted last week that a number of well-known UK companies, including AstraZeneca, BAE Systems and the contractor Balfour Beatty, could soon fall into American hands ...

Highly priced deals are undoubtedly good news for UK shareholders, often pension funds, and for the executives of targeted companies, who can rely on a big bonus from their new bosses for oiling the takeover process.

But while the City, and the coalition and Labour governments have largely cheered on the deals, unions have warned that the impact on jobs is likely to be severe ...

Independent  03 July 2010

Tate & Lyle to sell sugar business for £211m

Tate & Lyle's historic sugars business was set to fall into US hands today after the firm agreed a £211 million sale.

The group is selling its European sugar refining business, which includes its Golden Syrup factory in London, to American Sugar Refining - and has given the US firm a perpetual worldwide licence to use the famous brand name.

Chief executive Javed Ahmed said: "Sugar refining has enjoyed a long and proud history within Tate & Lyle, but we believe the interests of this business and its employees are now best served by being part of a company for whom sugar refining is core."

Independent  01 July 2010    

FTSE 100: how London's leading share index lost touch with the rest of Britain

The disasters befalling BP, BA, Cadbury and the Pru might give the impression that British business had lost its way.

In reality, they, like so many in the FTSE 100, are now detached multinationals playing by their own rules ...

The FTSE 100 and many of the companies listed on it have evolved in line with a belief in the benefits of globalisation, a mania for ultra-liberal markets and an infatuation with mergers and acquisitions – a philosophy that has come in for sustained questioning in the financial crisis.

There can be no harking back to a mythical past: as a small island with an empire-building spirit and a powerful navy, the UK has always had what might politely be termed an international trading outlook. Only an extremist would argue for a John Bull index, if such a thing could be compiled.

Nonetheless, some commentators argue it is undesirable that our collective prosperity depends so heavily on investments that are so imperfectly understood.

Tony Manwaring, chief executive of thinktank Tomorrow's Company, says:

"There is a huge disconnect between business and society in the UK. British politics has failed to recognise the changing nature of business in the context of globalisation. We need to be asking on what basis pension funds invest our money in companies such as the Prudential and BP, and what are they doing to advance a stewardship agenda to deliver long-term value. We cannot go back to some mythical British past, but there is a huge deficit of understanding and discussion." ...

Britain's best-known share index now reflects the fact that this country acts as an offshore financial centre for brass-plate corporations. Whether that is desirable is open to debate. But when the Footsie flounders, it is pension fund members who thought their money was prudently placed who pay the price ...

Observer  06 June 2010

OFT launches stock-take into UK economic assets

The Office of Fair Trading is mounting a massive stock-take of the country's economic infrastructure, from energy and water companies to transport and communications assets, in order to investigate whether consumers are being ripped off as many of these businesses have changed hands in the past decade ...

Over the past decade a slew of British infrastructure assets have changed hands as buyout firms have looked to capitalise on the dependable revenues of many utility companies and many of the country's crucial services are now owned by foreign companies. For instance, only two of the UK's household energy suppliers – Centrica and Scottish and Southern Energy – remain in British ownership, just over a decade after the market was opened up to full competition.

Thames Water is owned by the Australian bank Macquarie, having previously belonged to RWE which owns npower; Powergen is owned by German energy group E.ON; the nuclear power company British Energy is part of the French group EDF; the airports operator BAA is owned by the Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial; and Scottish Power is part of Spain's Iberdrola ...

Guardian  14 May 2010

Who owns Britain

Deutsche Bahn closes in on Arriva deal

Bus and rail operator Arriva is close to agreeing a 775p-a-share cash offer from Deutsche Bahn, the German state-backed rail operator that is expanding across Europe ahead of a possible flotation ...

Deutsche Bahn already operates the Chiltern rail franchise in the UK and owns freight train group EWS.

A deal would add Arriva's Wales and CrossCountry rail franchises, plus a clutch of bus services.

However, Arriva's chief attraction is its mainland European businesses spread over a dozen countries – providing footholds in Europe's liberalising transport market ...

Telegraph  20 Apr 2010

Arriva

Innocent smoothie denies sell-out after Coca-Cola gets majority stake

The founder of Innocent smoothies denied last night he had sold out to Coca Cola despite allowing the US multinational to swallow a 58% stake in the small and ethically-minded British business.

Richard Reed said the existing directors would continue to control Innocent and their goal of bringing healthy drinks to a global market could only be enhanced by a transaction estimated to be worth £75m.

"I genuinely believe that this is not a selling out but a continuation of our work. There will be no change in the commitment to natural healthy food, to sustainability and to giving 10% of our profits to charity.

"We remain in full operational control of the business and we should be able to proceed towards our goal of taking Innocent to every country in the world," he added.

Innocent, which markets itself as Europe's favourite smoothie company, is the latest in a long line of UK firms falling into the hands of foreign ownership but is also another example of a business set up with high-minded goals that has been taken over by a very large and conservatively-run predator.

Cadbury, which had caused adverse comment by buying up the Green and Black chocolate firm, was itself recently bought up by Kraft of America while Body Shop has been acquired by L'Oreal and Pret a Manger by McDonald's ...

Guardian  19 Apr 2010

'Cadbury's law' to be in Labour election manifesto

10 foreign takeovers of UK companies in the past decade

Small island for sale

I back foreign takeovers - Blair

MPs open fire on Kraft over plans to shut Cadbury factory

Kraft couldn't give a toss about it's reputation; it's in business to asset-strip Cadbury's, and for the likes of Lord Mandelson and his fellow corporate-grovellers to be complaining now is a classical example of the 'Third Face of Power' in action: pursue market fundamentalism below the radar, appear to be doing the opposite on the radar.

Report on takeover says the US food giant was either incompetent or cynical ...

Cadbury had earmarked the 75-year-old plant for closure in October 2007, which would have prompted production of Curly Wurlies, Fudge and Mini-Egg to move to Poland.

In its takeover proposal documents released in September, Kraft said it "would be in a position to continue to operate" the Keynsham facility.

Just a week after sealing the takeover, Kraft performed a startling U-turn at the cost of 400 jobs. Following meetings with Cadbury management, Irene Rosenfeld, the chairman and chief executive of Kraft Foods, said "it became clear that it is unrealistic to reverse the closure programme".

The move sparked outcry from the public and politicians.

The report said Kraft "has left itself open to the charge that either it was incompetent in its approach to the Somerdale factory or that it used a 'cynical ploy' to improve its public image during its takeover of Cadbury.

"Its actions have undoubtedly damaged its UK reputation and has soured its relationship with Cadbury employees," it added ...

Independent  07 April 2010    'Third Face of Power'

Kraft promises MPs: no job cuts in UK

Mandelson calls for tougher takeover rules

Brown warns Kraft on jobs

The sad lesson of Cadbury is the City still holds the whip

£2m a day cost of Cadbury deal – plus £12m for the boss

Russians prepare £1bn grab for UK fuel supplies

GAZPROM ... is expected to lodge an offer this week for a network of 800 petrol stations and the Lindsey oil refinery at Killingholme, Lincolnshire.

The assets have been put up for sale by Total, the French oil group. It has hired JP Morgan, the investment bank, to sell its UK business, which employs 5,000 people.

The business is expected to fetch more than £1 billion ...

The auction is part of a remarkable shake-up of Britain’s oil refining and distribution industry. Half of the refining capacity, built up in the 1960s and 1970s to take production from a booming North Sea, is up for sale as energy giants look to sever ties with the low-margin, low-growth British market ...

Times  28 March 2010

Kraft promises MPs: no job cuts in UK

Kraft made a humiliating public apology and vowed not to axe any UK manufacturing jobs for at least two years after it was accused by MPs of fighting dirty for control of Cadbury.

The pledge, which only covers 40% of the UK workforce of the enlarged business, was made by Kraft's executive vice-president, Marc Firestone, during a bruising two-hour appearance before the business select committee that left the American visibly shaken.

Not only verbal insults were levelled at Firestone during the hearing.

Lindsay Hoyle, Labour MP for Chorley, shook a Terry's Chocolate Orange at him as an example of Kraft's poor track record as a custodian of British companies.

He said the once was famous chocolate was now "made in the EU" and the York factory long gone.

Kraft made similar promises to Terry's of York only to move production to Poland, said Hoyle who added they did "exactly the same" to York as the Vikings: "They pillaged and asset-stripped that company."

Firestone said Terry's and Cadbury were two very different companies, adding the former "did not have the scale" to continue operating from its York base ...

Guardian  16 Mar 2010

Mergers and acquisitions

Mandelson calls for tougher takeover rules

•Raising the voting threshold needed to secure new ownership to two-thirds

•Lowering the requirement to disclose share ownership during a takeover bid from 1% to 0.5%

•Giving the bidding company less time to tie up a deal

•Forcing bidders to reveal how they intend to finance a takeover

•Requiring greater transparency on advisers' fees and incentives ...

BBC NEWS  01 Mar 2010

Kraft inquiry hits Takeover Panel succession

Takeover frenzy is leaving Branch Office Britain with an identity crisis

If there is one good thing to come out of Kraft's takeover of Cadbury, it is that the Takeover Panel is finally taking a look at a system that tilts the odds too far in favour of foreign predators.

UK companies are among the least equipped in the world to defend themselves against hostile takeovers, because our markets are so open, even in comparison with the US where companies often use poison pills and other bid-repellents.

Businesses here are also vulnerable because the process is easily manipulated by the bidder. The takeover timetable allows predators to place targets under siege for extended periods: Kraft went public with its interest in August, but the 60-day clock only started ticking in December.

Roger Carr, the former chairman of Cadbury, raised this and other issues including increasing the shareholder voting threshold from a simple majority to 60%, and the possibility of disenfranchising hedge funds and other short-term investors. The panel will look at this and publish a consultation paper.

It will take its time, and it is unlikely to come up with wholly satisfactory reforms: it is not within its remit, for instance, to delve into whether a bid is in the public interest, though I'm with Vince Cable in thinking that this important test should be restored ...

The UK has seen more foreign takeovers in the past six years than Japan or Germany, both of which are larger economies ...

Ownership matters, especially in a recession. Inflows dry up – new foreign direct investment in the UK fell by 90% last year – and existing spending can be savagely cut. Companies are likely to prioritise their home markets, leaving jobs and pensions in the UK at risk: Tata, for instance, is increasing steel production in India while mothballing its Redcar plant ...

The risk is that this country could dwindle into Branch Office Britain, and that the owners of assets will be remote and unaccountable ...

Guardian  28 Feb 2010

Russians prepare £1bn grab for UK fuel supplies

UK still good investment opportunity - Brown

As Cadbury and Corus Steel can confirm

Around 250 chief executives, entrepreneurs and academics are due to attend the Global Investment Conference, which will be addressed by Gordon Brown today.

The government will also launch a new "investors' charter' at the event, which is expected to include a pledge to consult large companies before making further changes to the tax or regulatory system ...

Lord Davies, the trade minister, argued that the UK had a good track record at attracting foreign investment.

"The UK has been hugely successful at attracting foreign direct investment ... There are over 75,000 foreign-owned companies in the UK and they account for around 40% of GDP," he said.

Guardian  22 Feb 2010

The blight of foreign owners

There was no more fervent forelock-doffer to the Thatcher 'transformation' of Britain to 'free' market goals than The Dacre.

Now that the downsides are emerging, The Dacre whinges constantly but to no effect. It's all 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

Like Brown and Mandelson - faced with the unpopularity of their neoliberal policies - they fret and fume and spin, but to no avail.

It's an exerecise in the third face of power: voters must get the impression that it's someone else' fault.

When the industrialist Ratan Tata won control of Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker in 2006, the deal was hailed by Labour as marking 'a new era of British-Indian relations based on equality of common interest'.

At a subsequent meeting of Gordon Brown's business council at the Treasury, Tata - then the proud owner of Corus and Jaguar Land Rover - was hailed as a business hero who extolled the virtues of open markets.

There was a basic flaw in his speech.

Whereas Britain, since the age of Thatcher, has allowed foreign enterprise to snap up UK assets, many British companies have found it extraordinarily difficult to break into the Indian market, particularly in finance, and have to operate with Indian partners and through joint ventures Britain's open-door policy has proved a very mixed blessing.

In the case of Jaguar Land Rover it was to the UK Government that Tata turned for help at the height of the 2008-09 recession. Now we find that while Tata is still expanding steel production in India it is abandoning the iconic Redcar plant.

No one wants a return to the 1970s, when Britain propped up ailing industries, but in an era when £1trillion has been lavished on keeping the banking industry afloat - some of it leaking into the bonus pot - there must be a case for short-term subventions.

One must also ask whether an independent Corus, without the debt burden of its Indian parent, would have been quite so susceptible to global winds of change or have been exploited in quite the same way for 'carbon' allowances.

The announced closure earlier this month of Cadbury's Somerdale plant near Bristol, just days after Kraft seized control, was a further example of how foreign owners simply do not care, whatever promises they may have made to government and the unions.

One has to trust the Pensions Regulator is keeping a close eye on how Cadbury's new owner intends to deal with the deficit in the confectioner's pension fund. As we reported yesterday the trustees have called in advisers to assess the deficit.

Having recently abandoned a defined-salary scheme in the US it is hard to believe Kraft will be that keen to honour pensions promises to Cadbury workers.

Daily Mail  20 Feb 2010

Sick trade in NHS medicines

Public interest test for takeovers should be reintroduced, says Vince Cable

The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman said the goverment had blundered earlier this decade when it brought in a new regime under which mergers and acquisitions were assessed purely on competition grounds.

The failings of this approach became obvious, Cable told the Radio 4's Today Programme this morning, when Kraft launched its hostile attack on Cadbury.

"What Peter Mandelson promised was huge government opposition and in reality there was no opposition – it just melted away," said Cable. "We ought to have a public interest test again, and we ought to look at the role of the hedge funds who take over large holdings for small periods during a takeover battle." ...

Guardian  10 Feb 2010

Kraft’s jobs pledge was always risky

Kraft deserves public anger

Mandelson attacks Kraft

Defend UK firms from foreign takeovers

Mandelson's 'disappointment' after Kraft meeting

As a supporter of global free markets, Mandelson is pretending to interfere with the Invisible Hand in pursuit of the third face of power.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has said he is "disappointed" that food giant Kraft would not commit to managing Cadbury's brands in the UK.

Lord Mandelson spoke after a meeting with Kraft boss Irene Rosenfeld.

He said he was glad of the personal meeting, but would now be looking for "much harder, more specific commitments in the next three to six months" ...

BBC NEWS  02 Feb 2010

The sad lesson of Cadbury is the City still holds the whip

For all Labour's puff about an economy built on industry, the takeover shows the dominance of finance is unchecked ...

Whatever guarantees the government thinks it can extract from Kraft are worthless. Peter Mandelson made it abundantly clear to Cadbury's institutional shareholders that he did not want the Kraft bid to succeed. It made no difference once the price was right.

For the business secretary, the capitulation of the Cadbury board is a profound embarrassment. It was Mandelson who said that the lesson from the most savage recession since the second world war is that Britain needed less financial engineering, more real engineering.

It was an excellent soundbite, because the slump brutally exposed the UK's over-dependence on funny money and wheeler-dealing in the City. But that's all it was: a soundbite ...

The hedge funds, which have been piling into Cadbury shares for the past few months, have made a killing.

Less financial engineering? Don't make me laugh. This was the return of business as usual with a vengeance.

As Joe Lampel, professor of strategy at Cass Business School, noted yesterday: "It is clear that the big winners from the forthcoming Cadbury/Kraft merger are the hedge funds who had plenty of time to accumulate holdings in Cadbury, and can now realise substantial profits." ...

Guardian  19 Jan 2010

£2m a day cost of Cadbury deal – plus £12m for the boss

Mergers and acquisitions

Private Equity

Brown warns Kraft on jobs

Brown's bluster in regard to the Kraft takeover of Cadbury is a cynical attempt
to pretend that the government can influence Kraft's jobs and investment policies.

Agreement by Cadbury to a £11.9bn takeover bid from its US rival Kraft Foods prompted Gordon Brown today to warn the American conglomerate to protect jobs in the West Midlands.

Cadbury accepted defeat in its battle to stay independent by recommending a £11.9bn takeover from Kraft, ending one of the most fiercely contested takeovers in the City for some time.

Cadbury employs 6,000 people in the UK and the Unite union expressed fears that the deal would lead to job losses as the US company puts a priority on paying back its debt. "Whatever good intentions Kraft may have towards Cadbury's workforce, the sad truth is there will be an irresistible imperative to pay down their debt, and this raises real fears for jobs and investment in this country," said Jennie Formby at the union.

But the prime minister said today: "The one thing I want to say is this: we are determined that the levels of investment that take place in Cadbury's in the United Kingdom are maintained. And we are determined, of course, that at a time when people are worried about their jobs, that jobs in Cadbury can be secure" ...

Guardian  19 Jan 2010

The sad lesson of Cadbury is the City still holds the whip

£2m a day cost of Cadbury deal – plus £12m for the boss

Mergers and acquisitions

Private Equity

Cadbury can look after itself. But, at last, Mandelson has seen the light

The business secretary's belated intervention in Kraft's takeover bid for Cadbury is a welcome change of course. We clearly can't rely on investors to defend national interests ...

(Mandelson's) ... move resonates beyond the Cadbury situation, which is symptomatic of the casual way we have allowed household-name companies to be flogged off to foreign buyers.

It marks a belated break with the laissez-faire policy that prevailed throughout New Labour's reign, which saw the UK stock market stripped of ICI, Hanson, P&O's ports, BAA, Abbey National, gas company BOC, glassmaker Pilkington and a long list of others, including energy and utility businesses ...

As Mandelson has suddenly noticed, mainstream investment institutions appear to behave perversely in take­overs.

Mergers are concocted by investment bankers, for the benefit of investment bankers.

Executives go along with them for the chance to boost their empires, egos and bank balances.

Most deals destroy value in the long term, so you would expect shareholders to put their feet on the brakes.

They don't, partly because their minds are on their quarterly performance figures ...

We have a highly diverse and indirect ownership model, where the members of pension funds have little say over, or even knowledge of, the investments made on their behalf.

Many might be horrified if their savings went to back a takeover involving significant job losses, but the institutions managing their money show no inclination to act, possibly because they see themselves as part of the City eco-system rather than as agents of the pension-holding public.

Nagging shareholders won't bring the desired results. Pension funds and trades unions need to be much more active and engaged in what happens to their members' money.

If the government really is concerned with the impact of takeovers on jobs, research and pensions, it should have the guts to take a position on the industries and companies it sees as vital to the national interest, as the French and Germans, and even the Americans, do. It's not enough to leave the job to investors.

Observer  17 Jan 2010   

Economic Democracy

Reinventing the Firm

Thousands of jobs that were to have been created in Britain to build the next generation of nuclear power plants could be heading overseas instead, after Westinghouse, the nuclear company sold by the government three years ago to Toshiba, chose one of its largest shareholders as the lead contractor to build reactors.

Westinghouse is expected to confirm this week that it has appointed US-based Shaw Group to head up its £10bn nuclear programme, passing over the favourite for the contract, rival engineering group Fluor.

Industry sources said that Shaw is likely to source far more reactor components from overseas than Fluor, which has close relationships with British manufacturers. The Unite union claimed that 10,000 new jobs in the UK would not be created as a result of Shaw being selected ...

Guardian 22 November 2009

... there is evidence to prove that free trade has not served well the richest economy in the world.

The US showed remarkable growth together with a rise in real wages for a majority of its population up until the late 1960s.

This was a period when the US manufacturing industries were in good health and were still protected from foreign competition by tariffs (taxes on foreign imports). Since 1973, however, when it turned to quasi free trade, the country has seen declining levels of real wage for around 80 percent of its workforceas high wage manufacturing sector jobs have been replaced by low wage service sector jobs.

The benefits of free trade have only accrued to the owners and CEOs of large multinational corporations which have been able to outsource production to low wage countries. Of course there has been overall GDP growth but that says nothing about how the benefits of this growth were distributed. Besides, the current financial crisis bares for all to see how consumer demand during the recent years was built upon the foundations of unsustainable debt.

Many free trade economists argue that the consumers benefit the most from free trade since it lowers the costs of goods and services. These economists forget that the same consumers are also workers and wage earners. If they lose jobs due to decline in manufacturing and increased outsourcing or are forced into low wage sectors of the economy due to free trade, their purchasing power is reduced. For one who suffers wage loss in tandem with falling prices there are hardly any benefits from free trade to brag about ...

openDemocracy 13 April 2009

This recession will hasten the shift to a new economic world order

Goldman Sachs predicts Indian incomes to become world-class by 2030

Free trade – or fair trade?

There has been anger over the government's decision to award a £7.5bn contract to build a fleet of inter-city trains to Japanese firm Hitachi.

The government said the contract for the "super express" trains would "create and safeguard" 12,500 UK jobs.

But the Conservatives said the transport secretary had not provided details to back up the jobs claim.

Unions have called for urgent talks with the government over how much of the work will be done in the UK.

The stock will replace ageing high-speed trains on the Great Western and East Coast main lines.

The consortium awarded the contract, called Agility Trains, is made up of John Laing, Hitachi and Barclays Bank.

The rival consortium which missed out included Bombardier, the only company making trains in the UK, which employs more than 2,000 workers at its Derby factory.

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon described the plans as the single biggest investment in inter-city trains for a generation.

He said: "This announcement demonstrates that this government is prepared to invest, even in difficult economic times, by improving our national infrastructure.

"It is good news for the British economy that over 12,500 jobs will be created and safeguarded, good news for the regions that the government is supporting significant inward investment, and good news for passengers that we are taking the steps necessary to improve their rail journeys."

But Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers said the announcement was "typical spin" from the government.

"Only around 500, at most of the 12,500 jobs, announced today will be created in the UK by the train builder Hitachi and Labour have produced no convincing evidence to back up the rest of their claims on jobs.

"This announcement raises further questions about Gordon Brown's claims about British jobs for British workers. Geoff Hoon needs to stop the spin and tell the UK's hard pressed train manufacturing industry the real truth about his decision on replacing intercity trains."

Derby North Labour MP Bob Laxton said the decision was bad news for the area.

"This is a crass decision which gives the Japanese an opportunity of getting into the UK market. I don't believe for one moment the figure of 12,500 jobs because work will be brought into the UK from overseas," he said.

Agility Trains said it was committed to spending 70% of the contract value in the UK, adding that Hitachi and John Laing expected to create 2,500 skilled engineering jobs in the UK, in train manufacturing, construction and maintenance. ...

BBC NEWS 12 February 2009

Fast train to futility

Spin claims over £7.5bn train contract

Foreigners will power UK's next nuclear age

If Britain is to build more nuclear power stations it will have to look abroad for expertise because it no longer has the skills to build reactors, writes Russell Hotten

...

Yesterday, Areva, the French state-controlled group and the world's largest builder of nuclear power stations, effectively threw its hat into the ring, saying that it could have a new series of reactors up and running by 2017.

...

So, as well as the political and regulatory hurdles of embarking on a nuclear-build programme, this lack of indigenous experience could also be a problem. British experts in the nuclear field are a dwindling breed.

According to Prof Ian Fells, a leading expert on the industry: "The teams of engineers that built Sizewell B in 1995 are all retired or dead. We do not have the skills to build nuclear power stations any more." ...

Business, The Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2006

French energy boss in nuclear warning