Friday, June 3, 2011

Lotus lay off 99 people, blamed on UK Government and the Regional Grant Fund

Lotus are to right size the company again!
Job losses imminent at Lotus  - The Manufacturer site.

After missing out on £27.5m in funding from the Government's Regional Growth Fund, Lotus has announced that 99 jobs are to be cut at its plant in Hethel, Norfolk.

Geoffrey Mead, employment partner at Eversheds, explains the current law: "You come across employers who will keep the number of redundancies below 100 to have a period of 30 rather than 90 days. You might say that is a bit sneaky but it is structuring your decisions to comply with legal requirements." He said Lotus could save significant wage costs – “60 days’ pay for up to 99 people” – by doing this.


I am on the outside looking in. I seem to remember Proton writing off all Lotus debts and right sizing the company under the previous CEO...

Now they have loaded the company up with debt and are also right sizing the company again. Dany and his team are certainly different. I have never met any of them. My experience with the previous CEO was a little negative. Plenty of people within Lotus seem to have taken the opportunity to promote themselves at my expense, our telephone conversation was interesting to say the least!

I don't see any out of the box thinking here. Designing and producing cars is what car manufacturers do. Laying off people to increase profit also comes into play, especially at Lotus. Sponsoring an F1 team that is known as Renault is a great deal for Renault who sell them the engines.

As I say I am on the outside looking in. Presently it doesn't look pretty. I'm sure there are plenty at Lotus that say I don't either!

Such is life.

As you know I have identified a campus in California. This campus would serve North America. The estate agent is CB Ellis Richards.

Here one of their UK consultants explains his view of the Regional Grant Fund... Maybe someone at Proton or Lotus should speak to them...

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