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JAGUAR Land Rover (JLR) may be looking for financial partners after parent company Tata Motors admitted it would look at relationships that benefit the British car-maker.

The news comes as JLR prepares to close its UK factories next month for a week as sales slump.

JLR has reported a 50 per cent sales plunge in China, launched a £2.5 billion ($A4.7 billion) savings program and announced plans to reduce the workforce by thousands.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who is the chairman of Tata Sons Limited – the holding company that oversees assets including Tata Motors – said the company would “always look for partnerships” but is not interested in just “selling a stake and we have no say”.

In interview on Bloomberg Television in New York, Mr Chandrasekaran said: “We are not financial investors, Tata Group, we run companies.

“I’m not a Blackstone, I’m not a KKR,” he added, referring to capital equity companies.

JLR’s capital expenditure has exceeded its cashflow over the past two years, but Mr Chandrasekaran said his target is to reverse that trend by 2021.

“Once we do that, then people will believe what I’m saying,” he said. “I’m not running away.”



He said there were no plans to sell JLR, refuting analysts at research and broking firm Sanford C Bernstein who last month described JLR as “severely challenged” and suggested Tata Motors should look at BMW as a buyer because the German company is “awash with cash”.

Tata has previously denied reports it is looking at strategic options for JLR, including a possible stake sale.

“We’re not going to sell,” said Mr Chandrasekaran. “Auto is a core business for us. From revenue terms, auto is our largest company.”

Tata Motors bought JLR from Ford Motor Company in 2008 and promptly made it successful with booming sales in key markets including China and Russia.

Subsequently, sales have drifted and caused the savings program and job losses.

Issues include the fall in India’s car market, the economic slowdown in China and the uncertainty over Brexit. The one-week closure next month in the UK is reported to guard against disruption to supply chains from a possible no-deal Brexit.

Mr Chandrasekaran admitted that on top of global sales slides and weakening economies, some problems were attributed to vehicle quality and dealer issues.

“The auto industry is going through difficult times,” he said, adding that “getting the right portfolio, which one we invest in for electric vehicles, and how do we cut cost” are issues that need to be resolved.

In the Bloomberg Television interview, Mr Chandrasekaran said dealing with tariffs is the “new normal” for the global auto industry and that negotiations around Britain’s exit from the European Union have taken too long.

“Sometimes it’s better to have clarity than a desirable result,” he said. “Nations are getting more protective.”

The problems of JLR are affecting Tata Sons as Tata Motors wrote down its investment in the brands earlier this year by $5.7 billion. It is primarily affecting Tata Motors and Tata Steel, the nation’s biggest metal manufacturer.

By Neil Dowling

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