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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jtechkid who wrote (17637)	3/12/1998 3:09:00 PM
From: Teri Skogerboe	Respond to of 70976

Some rain on y'all's parade (Only a little). And with the spindoctors around here, this is nothing. We can have this spun positively in a NYsecond -g-. Hyundai: Demands title to Scottish site Originally published: WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 11 1998 By James Buxton, Scottish Correspondent Hyundai is pressing the Scottish Office for immediate ownership of the site of its delayed semiconductor plant in Fife to assist it in raising finance to complete the project, or enable it to put together a joint venture with another company. The 150-acre site near Dunfermline belongs to Scottish Enterprise, the development agency. The agency would normally have transferred it to the Korean company after the plant opened. Hyundai says having title to the land would give it greater security in negotiations with banks or other companies. Brian Wilson, the Scottish industry minister, yesterday said he was considering Hyundai's request but wanted to consider the implications of committing more public funds to the project. Hyundai has postponed the opening of the first œ1.25bn phase of the memory chip fabrication plant to the end of 1999, a year later than planned, blaming the economic crisis in Korea. This week it stopped most of the work on building the plant for four months, again blaming continuing economic difficulties in Korea. The suggestion Hyundai should obtain ownership of the site before the start of production brought an angry reaction from Michael Moore MP, Liberal Democrat Scottish industry spokesman. "This is a high-risk approach that will end in tears. Handing over ownership of the site with nothing in return would be a scandalous waste of public funds. What happens if the banks still don't give their support to the company?" The scale of public assistance promised to Hyundai to persuade it to locate its semiconductor plant in Scotland has attracted criticism since the deal was agreed in October 1996. The Conservative government was anxious to win a project that involved at least œ2bn of investment and promised 2,000 jobs. Hyundai is understood to have been promised œ38m in regional selective assistance for the project, while Scottish Enterprise is spending œ21m on infrastructure work, of which, it says, between œ9m and œ10m is directly attributable to Hyundai. Last December the Scottish Office said no regional selective assistance or financial assistance from Scottish Enterprise had yet been paid to Hyundai. c Copyright the Financial Times Limited 1998 "FT"