MG Rover was sold for £10, then collapsed under £1.4B of debt

MG Rover was the last mass-market British carmaker, the descendant of the Austin, Morris, and MG brands. In 1994 BMW bought the Rover Group for £800M. But BMW struggled with the acquisition, and in 2000 it sold the car business to a consortium of four British businessmen — the Phoenix Four — for £10, while keeping the Land Rover and Mini brands.

The Phoenix Four ran the company through a complex web of holding companies. They paid themselves £42M in salaries and pensions over five years, while the car business never turned a profit. The company lost £4B in 2000 alone, and losses narrowed but never disappeared. By 2004, MG Rover was still losing £80M a year.

In April 2005, a planned rescue merger with China's SAIC collapsed. MG Rover went into administration with debts exceeding £1.4B. More than 6,000 workers lost their jobs immediately, and an estimated 30,000 more in the supply chain. The Phoenix Four were banned from being directors for a total of 19 years. Deloitte, the company's auditor, was fined £14M for failing to manage conflicts of interest.