Category Archives: United States

Britain, Business, Defence, Government, National Security, Politics, United States

Defence Secretary to be quizzed by MPs over hostile bid for GKN

TAKEOVER BID OF GKN THREATENS NATIONAL SECURITY

GOVERNMENT ministers face a grilling in the House of Commons this week over the hostile £7.4billion takeover bid for engineering giant GKN.

Theresa May is under pressure to intervene amid mounting concern about the impact the buyout could have on industry and national security.

Redditch-based GKN makes parts for the F-35 Anglo-American fighter jet, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the US’s B-21 stealth bomber, as well as car parts such as driveshafts for the automotive industry.

Its future has been thrown into doubt after the City turnaround group Melrose lodged a £7.4billion offer last month. GKN’s board is attempting to fight the deal. Melrose is known for asset stripping which often leads to large numbers of people losing their jobs through restructuring.

It has emerged that the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is set to be questioned about the bid when he appears this week before the defence select committee. Its chairman Julian Lewis said: “The committee have had correspondence strongly against and in favour of the hostile takeover bid and I therefore wouldn’t be surprised if the topic came up [during the committee hearing].”

There is growing concern across Whitehall about the impact this aggressive takeover of GKN would have, especially the long-term defence and security implications it may have for the UK.

The takeover already faces the prospect of wider investigations, with the business, energy and industrial strategy committee expected to scrutinise it further after initial questions were raised by chairman Rachel Reeves.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is understood to be monitoring the situation closely, and a senior civil servant has been appointed to examine the impact of a takeover.

The US’s own committee on foreign investment will also have to examine any takeover, as will the authorities in France and Germany.

GKN dates back nearly 260 years and made cannonballs for the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars.

It now has around 6,000 employees in the UK among 58,000 worldwide. It is a key supplier to aerospace firms including Airbus, with bases in towns including Redditch, Luton and Telford.

Melrose specialises in buying underperforming firms and selling them on at a profit within three to five years. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable has urged the Government to block the bid for GKN, calling Melrose an “utterly unsuitable owner”.

Speaking in the Commons earlier this month, the Prime Minister said: “Of course the Business Department will be looking closely at, and has been following closely, the issue. I and the Government as a whole will always act in the UK national interest.”

Concern about a GKN takeover has also been raised in the United States, where Congressman Neal Dunn has written to the committee on foreign investment urging it to block the bid.

He said: “In addition to concerns over who may ultimately acquire GKN, Melrose’s business strategy will undermine long-term investments in research and development and secure supply chains, which are critical to the major defence platforms GKN currently supplies.”

Any takeover would have to be considered by Germany’s federal ministry of economic affairs and energy and the French ministry of economy, according to documents made available by Melrose.

Melrose’s executive officers say that they “welcome any and all opportunities to explain to government why we [Melrose] believe a merger with GKN will create an industrial powerhouse of which the UK can be rightly proud”.

They added: “Melrose builds businesses to long-term health and prosperity and has an impeccable pension track record.”

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Government, Military, North Korea, United States

US Air Force bombers and fighter jets off North Korea’s coast…

USAF

Last week, US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers flew with F-35B fighter jets over the North Korea coast. It is the farthest north of the country’s Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that any US military plane has flown over in the 21st century. The Pentagon has referred to the mission as sending a “clear message”.

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. Appendage

DMZ

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Government, North Korea, Politics, Society, United Nations, United States

Comment: President Trump’s UN speech

DONALD TRUMP

MANY will sense an unmissable irony in President Trump’s address at the United Nations, set-up after the Second World War to promote global peace and co-operation. Mr Trump issued the bluntest of threats to “totally destroy” North Korea.

The only moot point is whether the leader of the free world intends to achieve that objective with a military invasion and conventional weapons, or by means of a nuclear strike.

These are certainly deeply worrying times. A forum meant for dialogue and cultural understanding, has been used by Mr Trump in the delivery of the most incendiary message a world leader could have mustered.

Mr Trump, of course, is no admirer of the UN, and has been constantly dismissive of the global body since coming to presidential office. Up until now, that criticism has been accepted as the usual bluster we have become accustomed to.

This week, however, his rhetoric moved to a new level. In vowing to obliterate North Korea, the American President is deliberately provoking Kim Jong-un, and by resorting to the playground tactic of name-calling with his reference to “Rocket Man”, many observers will wonder if he is laughing at the North Korean leader.

This sort of approach by Mr Trump has worked well for him in the New York real estate market, where the winner takes all, and risks can be handsomely rewarded. It now looks as if he believes that a similar sort of approach can produce the same sort of results in war games, when the reality is that there would no winners. A strike on North Korea would almost certainly prompt counter-attacks on every territory within range of Kim Jong-un’s armoury – South Korea, China, Japan, Russia – and that is before account is taken of the secondary effects of fall-out from a nuclear explosion.

The danger in all of this is that Trump’s baiting of the North Korean leader could be enough to spark warfare. If we are unsure of what Trump’s actual strategy is, we have no idea what his counterpart is thinking right now, or how close to the edge he might already be. Kim is clearly irrational and unstable.

The other great irony from Mr Trump’s war-mongering address is that he is looking for backers to endorse his positioning. But a glance around the room would have seen only despair from the assembled delegates.

Mr Trump’s only known way of dealing with conflict is to goad, and growl threats which put every one of us at risk. There must be a better way.

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