Moulton hits out after Government belatedly clears aerospace deal

THE boss of private equity firm Better Capital has hit out at the Government for needlessly causing the collapse of a deal to sell Northern Aerospace to a Chinese buyer that would have guaranteed the future of the business.

City veteran Jon Moulton said Better Capital had wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds pursuing a sale of Durham-based Northern Aerospace to Gardner Aerospace, which is owned by Shaanxi Ligeance Mineral Resources (SLMR), a Chinese company whose principal business is mining.

The sale was derailed after Greg Clark, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, issued a public interest intervention notice on national security grounds after consulting with the Ministry of Defence. That, in turn, triggered an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Now the CMA and the Government have both given the deal the green light after finding no competition or national security concerns.

Better Capital, however, announced earlier this month that it had already pulled out of the sale to Gardner after losing patience with the Government. Mr Moulton told The Daily Telegraph: “I am rather disappointed I had to waste so much of my life on it. We spent hundreds of thousands on this pointless exercise.”

He said he had “extremely limited contact” with the CMA during the course of the investigation and no one from the relevant government ministries had told him what concerns there were regarding national security. Mr Moulton said he would “never say never” to a future sale to Gardner, but that the focus now was on investing in Northern Aerospace with new machinery and facilities, and re-establishing a relationship with Airbus, its biggest customer. This could also lead to job changes, he added.

Gardner is itself is a former Better Capital company, having been sold to SLMR for £326m last year. Northern Aerospace makes components for airliners. The company employs 600 staff across four sites in the UK and two in Poland.

It is understood to have run into trouble after Airbus announced it would stop ordering from the company next year.

Airbus accounts for 60pc of its annual sales.