05 Mar 2008, 20:45
I found it very interesting and it explained how the company ended up over here and the many reasons why it failed from the mouth of the man himself. Here is an extract;
"The games played to hurt us were subtle and foolish. For example, part of our cash flow was dependent upon a form of loan guarantee called export guarantee financing, (ECGD), which would provide provide us with cash for each completed car before its sale. This type of financing, based on collateral of the finished product, is the safest financing a lending institution or government agency can provide...
...The British government did not deliver as it promised contractually, and our cash flow could not stand the loss of the loan financing that was ours by contract.
I was horrified. We had the finest plant, excellent tooling, a well-trained and rapidly improving workforce, and an outstanding product that was being enthusiastically received. In our master agreement with the British, we were to receive 90% of the dealer net price of our cars as ECGD as the cars went to the dock. This amounted to about $18,000 per car but was fully secured by the cars themselves.
...If we had known we were not going to receive it, instead of expanding our production we would have shrunk it down and slowly built up our working capital over the years."
From Page 143
If anyone hasn't read it and wants some information on anything relating to John DeLorean let me know and I'll have a look.
"The games played to hurt us were subtle and foolish. For example, part of our cash flow was dependent upon a form of loan guarantee called export guarantee financing, (ECGD), which would provide provide us with cash for each completed car before its sale. This type of financing, based on collateral of the finished product, is the safest financing a lending institution or government agency can provide...
...The British government did not deliver as it promised contractually, and our cash flow could not stand the loss of the loan financing that was ours by contract.
I was horrified. We had the finest plant, excellent tooling, a well-trained and rapidly improving workforce, and an outstanding product that was being enthusiastically received. In our master agreement with the British, we were to receive 90% of the dealer net price of our cars as ECGD as the cars went to the dock. This amounted to about $18,000 per car but was fully secured by the cars themselves.
...If we had known we were not going to receive it, instead of expanding our production we would have shrunk it down and slowly built up our working capital over the years."
From Page 143
If anyone hasn't read it and wants some information on anything relating to John DeLorean let me know and I'll have a look.