It’s official….aly depressing for Ford’s accountants. Tata, a gigantic Indian industrial conglomerate, has purchased two historic and evocative British automotive brands from Ford Motor Company.
Ford paid $2,500,000,000 for Jaguar back in 1989. Ford paid $2,700,000,000 for Land Rover in 2000. With an approximate inflation adjustment, Ford’s $2.5B into Jaguar works out to around $4.3B now, and the $2.7B it cost Ford to snag Land Rover from BMW works out to about $3.3B now. Ish.
So if you want to make Ford look really, really, really bad, figure the math like this: Ford paid $7,600,000,000 for Jaguar and Land Rover and sold the two as a set for $2,300,000,000. Ford’s beancounters say, “Umph!” Ratan Tata says, “Result.”
Ford is even going to contribute $600,000,000 to employee pension funds. Thankfully, Tata is leaning towards maintaining the current workforce level in the UK of 15,300 workers.
As of 9:17am EST, Ford’s “Global Sites” still included Jaguar and Land Rover. Who knows, they could be there for a while. Awkward.
