SAIC turns down JV with MG Rover
London: Administrators for MG Rover Group have said that the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. has decided not to renew talks about a joint venture. The company also ruled out the prospect of selling Britain's last major car manufacturer to another buyer.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which was appointed to oversee the company's future after it closed its British factory and filed for a form of bankruptcy a week ago, will likely now break up MG Rover and sell off the parts to repay its many creditors.

PwC said SAIC's decision will result in significant layoffs.

PwC, revealed last week that Rover was losing GBP 20mn to GBP 25mn each month.
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McDonald's completes fifty years
New York: McDonald's, the worlds biggest hamburger chain, celebrated its 50th anniversary on Friday.

Fifty years back, a milkshake machine salesman opened his first McDonald's in a Chicago suburb and turned a small chain of hamburger stands into an empire that included 30,000 restaurants, and serves 50 million people a day, becoming a symbol of the United States all over the world.

In the early 1950s, Ray Kroc travelled to the Californian town of San Bernardino, to find out why two salesmen, Richard and Maurice "Mac" McDonald had bought ten milkshake mixing machines for their hamburger stand. He saw a revolutionary method of preparing food called the "Speedee Service System" and decided it could be replicated all over the country.

Kroc formed a partnership with the brothers before buying them out in 1961. Kroc, who died in 1984, also believed that people don't like surprises and insisted his restaurants all look the same, serve the same food and follow the same grill and fryer procedures, offering his customers the same experience whether in Boston or Budapest.

McDonald's success was further boosted by a change in Americans changing lifestyle.

As car use became more popular and widely spread in the 1950's, McDonald's many restaurants across the country served to satisfy the demands of a busier and more mobile country.

After several years of stagnant US sales and its first-ever quarterly loss in 2002, McDonald's has been surging for the past two years. Its profits jumped 55 percent in 2004 from the year before to $2.28 billion.

McDonald's have been blamed for obesity and other health problems, but McDonald's refuses to take the blame, saying people can choose where they want to eat.

Even though the fast food giant's logo "the Golden Arches" may be one of the world's most recognised, McDonald's is not a big company in comparison to others, with Forbes placing it only at number 178 on the list of the world's largest companies.
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