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Rover Given 10 Day Stay of Execution

3 May 2000

The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper reported today that BMW set a
10-day deadline yesterday for the Phoenix consortium to produce a business
plan for Rover.  The demand was made during the first day of negotiations
between the companies.

BMW has vowed to shut down the British manufacturer if an agreement cannot
be reached with the new bidder by May 12th.  Headed up by the former Rover
chief executive John Towers, The Phoenix consortium hopes to maintain
production levels at the Longbridge factory in Birmingham at current levels
of about 250,000 cars a year, and rename Rover by adopting a classic
British car brand like Triumph or Austin-Healey.  Rover has been losing
about $3.5 million per day since the beginning of this year.

The Daily Telegraph story also reported that the consortium saw for the
first time, BMW's sales forecasts for Rover, the company's pricing policy,
and the extent of BMW's liabilities to the dealerships.  These had been
previously disclosed only to Alchemy Partners, the venture capital company
whose bid for Rover collapsed on Friday amid claims from both sides that
last-minute conditions had been brought to the negotiating table.

Furthermore, the story stated that part of Mr Towers's plan is expected to
include encouraging other European car makers to out-source some of their
production to Longbridge, such as Volkswagen

Phoenix also tried to convince BMW to move its new version of the Mini to
Longbridge from the company's Cowley plant in Oxfordshire, but BMW refused
to consider this option.