The UK government’s business department, and its subordinate Insolvency Service, have decided that John Towers was at fault when he ran MG Rover.
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The Insolvency Service said the directors “manipulated the assets and income streams through the use of companies in which they, rather than the creditors of MG Rover, had an interest, allowing them to benefit through large salaries, dividends and profits.”
No fines, no time in the slammer, no requests for return of the millions… just a warning that if they ever want to be a company director in the future, it’s not going to happen.
Save us. This was a terminally sick company that owners, BMW, wanted to shut but didn’t dare and which Her Majesty’s Government didn’t want to shut because of the political fall-out. So between them they encouraged the Phoenix Four to bring the turkey back to life.
Actor John Cleese’s famous character Basil Fawlty, the accident-prone proprietor of the mythical Fawlty Towers Hotel, could not have made a bigger Horlicks of this than HMG: the company collapse was in 2005; it then took four years to generate a report for which HMG paid GBP12m; it has taken a further two years to decide that the severe penalty for the Faulty Four directors of pensionable age was that they cannot be company directors again.
It’s like telling John Barnes he’s banned from playing any more football.
MG Rover’s ‘Phoenix Four’ temporarily disqualified as directors
