The Rover Takeover: Military-style operation executed in 12 days: The Insiders
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Your support makes all the difference.IT WAS a deal executed with the secrecy, speed and timing of a military strike. In only 12 days, Rover changed hands for pounds 800m with only a handful of businessmen and politicians in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan in the know.
BMW first approached British Aerospace to express an interest in Rover last autumn. But, until last Friday, not even John Towers, managing director of Rover, was aware that his company was about to be taken over by a German competitor.
BAe had seen the damage that press speculation and uncertainty over the ownership of Rover had wreaked on the business in the 1980s, first when Ford made an abortive bid and then when its own takeover plans became known, and was determined there would be no repetition.
All executives privy to the negotiations with BMW, including BAe's chairman, were required to sign letters accepting that it would be a criminal offence to release inside information to a third party. Apart from BAe's board of directors, very few other executives or advisers were let in on the secret, with the exception of two mergers and acquisition lawyers, David Lewis, of Norton Rose, and Nigel Boardman, of Slaughter & May.
After three months digesting all the financial, marketing and strategic information about Rover that it could lay its hands on, BMW decided to act a week last Wednesday.
An exceptional meeting of its supervisory board - the first in BMW's history - took place in Munich that day to approve the takeover strategy. By the weekend its intentions had been indicated to BAe, along with a first draft contract, and the following Wednesday BMW put in its formal offer.
That evening Tim Sainsbury, Minister for Industry, was told of BMW's interest - the first that any government minister had heard of the deal.
The following day - last Thursday - the BAe board met to discuss BMW's offer. By the afternoon, George Simpson, Rover's chairman, was on a flight to Tokyo to inform Rover's Japanese partner, Honda, that unless it was prepared to take over the company, BAe would accept BMW's offer.
As he landed in Japan on Friday, Mr Simpson received a polite but cool reception. Honda reiterated that it wanted to maintain its relationship with Rover but it was not interested in owning more than 49 per cent.
That did not tally with the strategy BAe had drawn up to exit from the car industry within a year of being freed from the undertaking it gave the Government not to sell Rover until August 1993.
By the time Mr Simpson arrived back in London, BMW had Rover in the bag.
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