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4. Finally, when Lord Thorneycroft was in Hong Kong he sent
a message to Mr Walker (CREDA telegram No 124) in the course of
which he suggested that, failing anything else, we should give
full backing to the Anglo/French/German consortium in which
Guest, Keen & Nettle fold hold a 30% share. The DTI are not keen
on this. They regard the GKN participation as a facade designed
only to give the French/German bid political respectability.
They believe that GKN would have to sub-constract nearly all the
work, probably to European firms.
5.
Assuming that the construction industry in this country can
find it in them to close the relatively small gap in the Italian
proposals, this remains the most hopeful prospect. But this is
being put together very late in the day. The DTI estimate that
it will take the commercial parties another 10 days to lay the
framework for a new consortium. If Hong Kong's timetable for
the Japanese bid holds, this would give the new group perhaps less than 3 weeks to put in a valid bid. This might be possible
but it seems unlikely. The timetable, however, is Hong Kong's
own; there is no organic reason why it need be adhered to. The
Governor does not want to buy Japanese and he has encouraged an Anglo/Italian get-together. I think we should tell him privately how matters stand, and the DTI have agreed that we can be fairly
frank with him. At the same time we can reasonably ask him to ensure that the Anglo/Italian consortium is given sufficient
time to put itself together.
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