£1,000,000 for British Motors

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 859, 31 December 1929, Page 6

£1,000,000 for British Motors

Huge Scheme to Expand Markets

Recent mails from England have brought details of the big move in British motor trade circles in which the Prudential

Assurance Company decided to invest £1,000,000 in motor trade

development. The plan is an outcome of conferences carried on between Messrs. Rootes, Ltd., Sir George May, secretary of the Prudential, Sir Gilbert Gainsey, the eminent accountant, and Sir Ernest Roney, the well-known London solicitor.

Another important sl op at the same time was the first selections of an industry committee to form proposals to submit to the Government. Sir William Morris, the governor of Morris Motors,. Ltd., Sir Herbert Austin, head of the Austin Motor Company, and Mr. W. H. Bullock, the managingdirector of Singers, Ltd., called the “Big Three’’ of British motor production, have been elected. Colonel A. J. Cole, chief of the Humber-Hill-man-Commer combine, will probably be added. This committee met Mr. J. H. Thomas, Minister of Unemployment, and discussed the whole prospect with a special eye to Britain’s industrial future. As a result the motor trade will make an agreement between all sides of the industry to bring about:— 1. Comparatively rapid and progressive absorption of 100,000 British unemployed in many trades. 2. The doubling of the British motor export market now valued at £7,000,000 this year. 3. The capture of the Empire markets in motors, estimated to be worth at present £60,000,000 and £115,000,000 in five years’ time. 4. In two years the increase in the employment of labour in British motor factories from the present 250,000 to at least 500,000 men and women. WHAT WILL BE DONE According to the London “Evening News,” Mr. William Rootes, one of the heads of the firm of distributors who will have the spending of this £1,000,000, stated:-—-“Our policy is to open up in South America with headquarters and executive at Buenos Ayres, to finds new markets in the Far East, build depots over the Continent, strengthen our organisation in India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and establish an adequate spares service.” Mr. Rootes is reported further with saying that the Prudential Company’s interest does not end with the payment of this sum. “Millions more are available.” Rootes, Ltd., is under the guidance of Mr. William Rootes and his brother, Mr. Reginald Rootes, both of whom are under 40 years of age. Since the brothers took over the business from their father a few years ago they have been working on a scheme to foster British export trade, and at the same time the turnover on their own business has increased from £40,000 to more than £8,000,000 Nearly all the London newspapers predict that this scheme is the prelude to Government action and support in the direction of dropping the horsepower tax on British cars in favour of a petrol-tax or some other form of duty, the retention of the McKenna import duties on foreign cars, and possibly Government overseas trade credit facilities.