HELLO and welcome to the AM Business Briefing, as Rolls-Royce has sold off its Norwegian maritime engine-making arm Bergen to British group Langley Holdings in a £53 million deal.
The completion of the sale marks another step towards Rolls-Royce's target to make at least £2 billion from asset sales as chief Warren East looks to rebuild the group's balance sheet.
Bergen Engines employs more than 900 people globally and made around £168 million in revenues last year.
Its new owner, Langley, has its headquarters in the UK and employs around 4,600 people, with main operations in Germany, Italy, France and Britain, alongside a substantial presence in the US.
It will run Bergen as a standalone business.
The sale of Bergen comes after an earlier deal with Russian group TMH Group was blocked by the Norwegian government last March.
Rolls said in an update last month that it is "firmly on course" to complete its disposals programme, with sales announced already totally around £2 billion.
Mr East has been overhauling Rolls to strengthen its battered balance sheet, selling off assets and raising more than £5 billion from issuing new debt and equity.
He has also embarked on a swingeing cost-cutting programme that will lead to 9,000 jobs being cut worldwide.
Rolls crashed to a £4 billion loss in 2020, having been hit hard by the pandemic as the crisis hammered the global aviation industry.
Ongoing woes in the sector have kept its civil aerospace arm - its largest business - under pressure, but the group said in December that it is seeing a "gradual recovery" in the division.
Glasgow firm sells labels business in multi-million-pound deal
MACFARLANE Group, the Glasgow-based packaging company, has sold its long-standing labels business in a deal worth £6.4 million.
MacFarlane Labels, which designs and prints self-adhesive and re-sealable labels mainly for the FMCG sector (fast-moving consumer goods), and its subsidiaries have been acquired by The Reflex Group, a privately owned company focused on the manufacture of labels and flexible packaging.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel