‘More a national asset than an investor's paradise’: financial management and the British Motor Corporation, 1952–68

Abstract

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of financial management in the British motor industry in the 1950s and 1960s. We question whether US ownership automatically implied greater financial control and immunity from capital market pressures and discuss whether the problems BMC/BMH (British Motor Corporation/British Motor Holdings) experienced were symptomatic of the absence of financial imperatives among British management at this time. Finally we widen the agenda to place our findings on financial management into a wider literature dealing more generally with the problems of managerial control and corporate governance within the motor vehicle industry in the 1950s and 1960s.

Keywords:

• Financial
• Management
• Efficient
• Markets
• Corporate
• Governance
• Short
• Termism
• Managerial
• Priorities