Tatas rule out sale of Jaguar Land Rover, will look for partners

NEW DELHI: Tata Motors, which owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), said it is open to finding partners for the automaker but isn't planning on selling the embattled unit. "We're not going to sell," said N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company. "Auto is a core business for us. From revenue terms, it is our largest company."

Tata Motors bought the maker of the Jaguar XE sedan and Land Rover Discovery SUV from Ford Motor in 2008. After turning it into a cash cow with booming sales in countries like Russia and China, JLR waned to such an extent that it had to launch a 2.5-billion-pound ($3.2-billion) savings programme and slash thousands of jobs worldwide.

Losses at Tata's automotive business have mounted with a slump in the country's car market, as well as trouble overseas, including an economic slowdown in China, where auto sales are sliding, and uncertainty over Brexit.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television earlier on Tuesday, Chandrasekaran said dealing with tariffs is the "new normal" for the global auto industry and that negotiations around Britain's exit from the European Union have taken too long."Nations are getting more protective."

While the company would "always look for partnerships", it doesn't want deals where "we just sell a stake and we have no say", Chandrasekaran said on Tuesday in New York. "We are not financial investors, Tata Group, we run companies. I'm not a Blackstone, I'm not a KKR."