CONFIDENTIAL
DRAFT LETTER TO MR ASTON, HONG KONG
HONG KONG MASS TRANSIT
Many thanks for your letters of 20 and 21 December.
thanks too for the Christmas and New Year wishes
Many
they are
of course reciprocated.
card from me to match the very decorative card I have
I am sorry you did not have a
received. I was not, however, quite sure of the
implication of the storks.
GEC
Like you in Hong Kong, we have been taking stock since
the decision of the Executive Council. Our thinking has
been directed towards salving something useful for the
main UK element in the Anglo-Italian consortium
Elliott Automation. Harry Codd of GEC- Elliott Automation
tells me that from the point of view of the future of
British mass transit engineering exports the supply of
equipment for the special coaches needed for tropical
and sub-tropical environments and the signalling and
centralised control systems are of the greatest
importance. If GEC-Elliott Automation were able to
supply all or part of the requirements under these
heads this would be most valuable to them in other
competitions, eg for mass transit systems in Singapore,
Tehran and elsewhere. GEC-Elliott Automation believe
that both technically and price-wise what they were
offering under both heads was highly competitive.
Indeed, they had the impression at earlier stages of
the negotiation that in this field GEC-Elliott Automation
were the leaders. Against this background, the thought
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