Rough road ahead for Hornby?

No idea, but since according to the BBC 60% of Chinese toy makers have gone bust recently, and Bachmann produce other toys too, I'd suspect that Bachmann could well be at greater risk than Hornby. I also wonder if Chinese financial reporting is as strict as EU practice, or as lax as US

- would anyone know if a Chinese company was in trouble before it is? Mind, judging by the Beeb documentary on three blokes trying to do business in China I suspect they have a system all of their own!

Cheers Richard

No, that's Renault.

Peter

Three cottage businesses give up in the face of two mega-companies?

and Bachmann produce other toys too, I'd suspect that

And government bailouts.

Cycles Peugeot made bicycles from 1886 until 2001, when the name was sold to Cycleurope. Peugeot-branded bicycles are still sold in several countries. From 1978 to 2001, they were also built under licence in Canada by Procycle.

According to Rory Bremner in the current Channel 4 Silly Money series on the economic crunch, the Chinese, despite low wages, have one of the highest levels of savings in the world. Although China is a Communist country, there is no social welfare or universal health care system and, being limited to one child per family, people cannot rely on their children to look after them in old age, so save as much as they can.

On the other hand, in the USA, a large proportion of people are up to their eyeballs in debt and savings are very low, one of the reasons given for the current economic situation. I'm sure that applies in many other countries too, to a lesser extent.

There are hundreds of mega-factories cheek by jowl. It's like the Lancashire cotton and Yorkshire wool mills in the 19th century.

We see very few French or British-built cars on the left side of the pond, except the BMW Mini and the odd Jaguar, Rolls-Royce or Range Rover. In the

70s Renault merged with American Motors, which soon went bust. Small quantites of Peugeots and Citroens were sold, but no longer. However we get lots of VWs, Mercs (including SMART), BMWs, Volvos, Saabs (GM), etc.

There was a time (1970s/80s?) when the French Government pushed the amalgamation of Renault, Citroen and Peugeot and had a large stake in the resulting company(s). It takes a major French disaster or war for their news to make it through to New Zealand newspapers, so other than their continued existance, I have no information on their current ownership or trading status.

Regards, Greg.P.

You've got Wiki, Google, etc. if you *really* want to know.

That was of course several generations ago! Hornby Dublo, Ford 10s, Bradford vans, Royal Enfields, Kenwood mixers ...

Regards, Greg.P.

Wasn't France's greatest naval victory in New Zealand?

OT, but no. Try the Chesapeake.

Or, more recently, Goree...

Err, my point was about "News". The sort of stuff one doesn't find out about at the time because it's a happening event. I need to know that it's happening and that I'm interested in it before I can Google it. Sure, if I want to find out about Renault, Citroen, Peugeot etc I am quite capable of Googling it.

BTW, Volvo is Ford (US). RR is now BMW, Jaguar (Ford US) and Landrover have been sold to ... an Asian company.

That was a terrorist action, not a naval action - we won. (sort of)

Regards, Greg.P.

I'm a little staggered that 4 billion dollars of revenue (in 2005) was only enough to get them into the top 100 electronics manufacturers...

Well there doesn't appear to be too many.

and then most of the victories mentioned were short lived.

Kevin Martin

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I'm fairly sure Kenwood stil had some plant at thier Leigh Park site in Hants att he turn of the century, and much more certaint hat tehy did in the early 90s.