Jon Moulton, the man whose bid for MG Rover was rejected by the government, today praised the report into its demise, but said there was nothing in it that could give grounds for a fraud investigation.

He pointed out highlights including the finding that one of the senior executives involved with Rover had falsely described himself as a lord in filings with Companies House.

Brian Parker explained to the investigators that his use of the honorific had been a “mistake”, but the investigators concluded: “We find it difficult to believe he did not notice this error at the time.”

Moulton told Sky News: “It is a really good read, quite amusing in parts, but there is not much evidence of something that looks like fraud.

“There are some very definitive efforts to extract value for the Phoenix Four and others, but I doubt if anybody would reasonably say this was a case for the Serious Fraud Office.”

Moulton, who has just quit his private equity firm, Alchemy, which he was running at the time, said the Government and the Phoenix Four had acted badly over the affair.

Alchemy had planned to axe most of the workforce, retaining just the MG sports car operations.
“It would have been a smaller business but we would have had a lot more money from BMW and would have secured redundancy and pensions deals for staff.”

He said the then Trade Secretary Stephen Byers had been tempted into siding with the Phoenix consortium because their proposal seemed better for the business on the surface as it involved retaining the main car manufacturing operations.

“The problem was, you had to find someone to chuck £1 billion at the company to make it work. There was no-one who wanted to do that.

“At the end of the day, it is not the Government's role to run car firms, but it is their role to make sure people are handled sensibly and redundancies handled properly."