Indian company Tata Motors buys Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford

The Indian car producer Tata Motors signed on Wednesday the acquisition contract for the British brands Land Rover and Jaguar. Tata Motors paid Ford over two billion dollars, the Press Trust of India news agency informs. The formal announcement will come on Wednesday, at 14.00, Romanian time.

Both the Tata Motors spokesman and the Ford officials refrained from any comments before the official release.

Ford lost 2.7 billion dollars in 2007, after a record loss of 12.6 billion dollars in 2006 and focuses now on reviving the operations in North America.

The American group bought the Jaguar brand in 1989, for 1.6 billion UK pounds sterling and the Land Rover brand (from BMW) for 1.7 billion pounds sterling in 1990. In March 2007, Ford sold Aston Martin, another UK premium brand, for 925 million dollars.