Save GKN from these corporate vultures

AS ruthless corporate raiders circle GKN – our oldest and one of our most strategically important engineering companies – the silence of Business Secretary Greg Clark is deeply troubling.

Get-rich-quick vultures from the private equity firm Melrose want to buy this great British company, break it up and sell it off in pieces – almost certainly to foreigners. In the process, they would make a fortune, with the four senior directors alone set to pocket up to a staggering £285million.

But inevitably, GKN would no longer be a major global player.

It’s the kind of rapacious greed and recklessness that gives capitalism a bad name. And more worryingly, it plays straight into the hands of Jeremy Corbyn’s Socialist agenda.

GKN is exactly the sort of manufacturer, innovator and exporter we will need to compete in the post-Brexit world.

Although it has been around for 260 years – making cannonballs for Waterloo and Spitfires for the Battle of Britain – it still sits at the cutting edge of technology in defence and aerospace, as well as supplying a wide range of crucial parts and systems to the automotive industry.

Letting predators dismember it would not only be a tragedy for the firm and its 58,000 staff. It would be disastrous for Britain.

But is the Government doing anything to stop it? When she came to power, Theresa May promised to defend British companies in ‘key’ industries against asset strippers.

GKN could hardly be more key to Britain’s future, yet all Mr Clark’s department says is that it’s ‘monitoring the situation’. We need action now if the firm is to be saved.

Whether it’s by the Government taking a ‘golden share’ or some other means, this hugely damaging takeover must be blocked.