Peter Mandelson the Hinduja Group and Jaguar cars

Well, well well.....

Peter Mandelson has been back as a minister in the UK for a matter of a few weeks and already the situation becomes intriguing.

He has today announced an interest in trying to save Jaguar/Land Rover, all well and good may be the view, a big employer, lots of jobs, but I wonder why he has chosen this particular employer.

Jaguar is now ultimately owned by Tata Group, who are an Indian owned business.

Interestingly Tata Group, announced the signature of a joint venture agreement with Indian Oil Corporation Ltd for establishing a coal-based power plant in Orissa, on 17 December

More importantly this joint venture will meet the demands of the IOCL Paradip refinery and petrochemicals complex, according to a Tata Power communication to the stock exchange. Tata Power will hold 74 per cent equity and IOCL will hold 26 per cent equity in the proposed joint venture.

No great shakes there. However, on December 12th, ONGC and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOC) joined hands for mutual co-operation in the fields of oil and gas exploration, production, and marketing.

ONGC themsleves have joint ventures in the development of Oil and Gas refineries in Iran and on 4th December the Hinduja group announced plans to develop a further refinery in Kakinda, although the ONGC are dragging their heels a little.

While there is nothing definitive about any of this, it seems a little strange, that for the first time in the recent past the Hinduja Group and Tata are loosely connected, it is within a matter of days, when large investments are being made, that Mandelson steps up to the plate to save Tata having to divert money into bailing out Jaguar/Land Rover.

Tata and Hinduja have crossed wires previously when Hinduja Group had a Joint Venture with Iveco(Fiat), before buying out the Iveco interest of Ashok Leyland, Ratan Tata is on the board of Fiat.

While this may all be an innocent coincidence, Mandelson, the Hindujas and seemingly unrelated trade deals do seem to go hand in hand.

I seem to recall Mandelson was forced to resign over a small matter of passports and the Hinduja brothers 7 years ago
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