History
LDV was formed in 1993 as Leyland DAF Vans Limited following a management buy-out of DAF NV's Leyland DAF van manufacturing division, following the bankruptcy of the Dutch company. Later the name was officially changed to LDV Limited.
Prior to its merger with Leyland Trucks and DAF Trucks in 1987 it was part of the British Leyland / Austin Rover Group empire and was latterly the Freight Rover arm of the Land Rover Group division.
In December 2005, after going into administration, LDV was bought by group Sun Capital/Sun European Partners and was subject to a financial restructuring. What Van reported LDV's commitment to its existing customers, including an assurance from their marketing director that their production target of 1000 vans per month would put them well above break-even point.
The Russian GAZ Group acquired LDV on 31 July 2006, and also established a new company, GAZ International, based in the UK, to focus on the automotive industry. The BBC reported that a GAZ spokesperson said that the company had appointed former Ford of Europe executive Martin Leach and former A.T. Kearney executive Steve Young to run the business, and that it planned to expand production at LDV's Birmingham plant by adding new product lines and entering new markets in Europe and elsewhere. GAZ had plans to export LDV technology to Russia, and start producing the Maxus at the GAZ Nizhny Novgorod plant in Russia with 50,000 as an initial volume. (http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/05-11-07_4) There were also proposals to export the GAS Maxus to Australia, a traditional market for British Leyland.
However, GAZ's plans never really showed any increased output, and due to the severe worldwide recession and a lack of long term investment and commitment, production was halted at LDV's Birmingham factory in December 2008.
After the UK Government tried once again to save the company by agreeing to pour in £5million of grants to enable Malaysia's WestStar Corporation to purchase LDV, WestStar failed to secure financing.
The assets of the company were sold by administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers to China Venture's firm Eco Concept, on 15 October 2009.
Read more about this topic: LDV Group
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)