Lord Meghnad Desai, eminent writer and professor emeritus of the London School of Economics, on Wednesday termed as unjustified the British government’s denial to offer an investment guarantee of 340 million pound loan to Tata Motors for facilitating takeover of Jaguar Land Rover.
“The Labour government behaved very badly with the Tatas. There is no justification for Tatas being refused help which was in form of investment guarantee and not aid,” Lord Desai said on the sidelines of a CII annual regional meet here.
“The Labour government is suffering from election nervousness. It was very liberal to business for the first few years, but this changed in the later years. As soon as elections are over, the hysteria will be over,” he said.
The Tatas had taken a loan of 340 million pound for the acquisition of JLR from the European Investment Bank about 10 months ago. The UK government declined to offer guarantee to the loan.
The company has now had it guaranteed by the State Bank of India, Bank of India and Bank of Baroda.
Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan were providing additional guarantees to meet the EIB credit requirements.
