Nanjing Auto and SAIC to fight it out over MG Rover?

MG Rover: it’s going to get eaten by a Chinese company, but which one?

On Friday, the Financial Times reported that Chinese auto giant Nanjing Auto had successfully bought MG Rover for £50 million. Today the Guardian questions the success of Nanjing’s bid, quoting ‘a source’ at rival Chinese auto maker SAIC who said that “that the notion of a completed deal was ‘moonshine'”.

SAIC, which stands for Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, was in the news earlier this year when it launched a bid for MG Rover; SAIC eventually backed out deciding that MG Rover price tag was inflated. But if the Guardian article is accurate, it now seems that SAIC has not given up hope of getting at least a part of MG Rover.

There is a further complication, because SAIC has already acquired the rights to certain pieces of MG Rover’s intellectual property (designs for engines etc.). It seems that this is also causing problems with the Nanjing bid for MG Rover.

Both SAIC and Nanjing are massive groups with complicated quasi-statal ownership structures, and in control of hundreds of different companies. As an example, the below is from a Sina.com article on Nanjing Auto:

Nanjing Automobile Group Limited Company has 100% ownership of four companies, controlling interests in 24 subsidiaries (of which 8 are Sino-foreign joint ventures), minority interests in 13 companies (of which four are Sino-foreign joint ventures), and more than 400 related enterprises. The group currently has three major manufacturing bases making more than 400 different products for the three big brands Yuejin (which means Leap Forward), Nanjing Iveco and Nanjing Fiat, with annual production being 200,000 vehicles.