Stop the takeover and asset-stripping of GKN

GKN is a key UK national asset; a highly successful, high-tech engineering company with a 250-year history based on sound, strategically-minded management and long-term investment in technology. A group of fat-cat city asset strippers called Melrose has succeeded in bribing GKN's shareholders by a very narrow margin (52%) to sell the company to them so that they can profit by breaking up the firm. It is deeply against the long-term interest of UK industry & society for the government to permit such an asset-stripping takeover. Melrose has no long-term interest in the success of the UK's industrial base, in the 6000+ UK jobs that GKN provides or in the national defence projects in which it is engaged. They are simply out to making a quick fortune via the destruction of an internationally successful UK firm. As Michael Heseltine has said, no other country in our position would permit such a deal to go through. It is time that the UK government demonstrated the resolve not to allow leveraged buyouts like this one to threaten our long-term national infrastructure. The government should prevent this deal on grounds of national interest and also put in place a proper parliamentary oversight system to vet all such takeovers in the future.