years_active nationality article_title birth_date employer name occupation
1966 -- 2005 british john towers -lrb- businessman -rrb-
 30 march 1948 mg engines rover group rover group phoenix venture holdings perkins john towers cbe businessman
john towers -lrb- businessman -rrb-

john towers cbe -lrb- born 30 march 1948 -rrb- is an english businessman , who was the owner and managing director of rover group ltd from 2000 until the company entered administration in 2005 .
this followed a succession of senior appointments within rover , which he had joined from massey ferguson tractors in 1988 .
towers started his career in 1966 as a student apprentice with perkins diesel of peterborough , which by that time had become a subsidiary of massey ferguson .
he rose within perkins to become director of engineering before leaving in the late 1980s to join the rover group .
together with peter beale , nick stephenson and john edwards , towers formed the phoenix consortium which bought rover group for # 10 -lrb- ten pounds -rrb- in april 2000 .
in addition they also bought the studley castle , a conference hotel .
they subsequently purchased midland powertrain , mg rover 's engine plant from bmw for # 20 .
finally , for # 50 along with an undisclosed sum from the royal bank of scotland , they purchased rover capital , -lrb- now mg rover capital -rrb- a book of rover car loans .
kevin howe was appointed mg rover 's managing director in july 2000 .
in april 2005 , mg rover went into administration , following the collapse of takeover talks with shanghai automotive industry corporation -lrb- saic -rrb- .
towers has been heavily criticised for his role in the company 's demise , and the phoenix consortium 's conduct relating to rover group was initially referred to the serious fraud office -lrb- sfo -rrb- , although after initial investigations the sfo concluded that no further action would be taken .
following publication of a government report into the failure of mg rover , towers - along with the other directors of phoenix - have been disqualified from holding any company office in the united kingdom or have undertaken not to do so .
towers , together with the other members of pvh , ran uk carmaker mg rover into the ground until it finally collapsed with the loss of 6,500 jobs .
pvh gave members of management `` unreasonably large '' payouts , a government-commissioned report found , which were `` out of all proportion '' .
towers awarded himself # 8.958 m whilst many employees lost their lifetime jobs - leaving with nothing .
nanjing automobile subsequently brought mg out of administration , but have since moved production to china .
