Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata Motors is seeing signs of recovery in the global auto sector, chairman Ratan Tata has said.
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“We are seeing the first signs of recovery, but we have to work very hard to make it happen,” he told AFP. “[The Jaguar-LandRover acquisition] was labelled as too ambitious, or too high-priced. I refute this… Tata Motors and Jaguar Land Rover will emerge as lean and cost-effective,” he told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting. We are a global company now, but have to face the challenges.”
He said there were some encouraging signs from Jaguar Land Rover which the company acquired for US$2.3bn dollars in June 2008. “There are new products to come,” Tata said.
Tata Motors this month said it had secured GBP175m ($288m) in additional funding for the luxury brands. The chairman said that the company needed to cut costs and improve profit margins.
Its first earnings to include Jaguar and Land Rover figures showed a net loss of INR25bn ($520m) for the fiscal year to the end of March, versus a INR21.7bn net profit in 2007-08.
Chief financial officer C Ramakrishnan told Reuters Tata Motors planned to offer a fixed deposit scheme to investors to raise up to INR15bn (US$300m).
The company had a fixed deposit scheme last year, through which it raised about INR25bn. Under company law guidelines, the maximum Tata could raise through fixed deposits had been increased to INR40bn, he told the news agency.
