THIS is a big weekend for the British car industry. The future of Jaguar and Land Rover, two of Britain’s most famous marques and the employers of 15,000 in the Midlands and Merseyside, will be decided by meetings this weekend.

Ford, the American car group that owns the two companies, has put them up for auction as a single unit. It is in discussion with bidders and will, within a few days, decide on a short list. The deal could value the pair at up to £1 billion.

All the bidders are foreign. Tata, the Indian industrial group, is being chased by American private-equity groups including One Equity and Ripplewood.

The sale is unlikely to spark the normal cries of protest about Britain’s industrial base being handed over to foreigners, for two reasons: one, the companies are already in foreign hands and, two, foreign groups have shown they are more than capable of resuscitating British car brands.

BMW, for example, has breathed life into Mini and Rolls-Royce, while Volkswagen has made a roaring success out of Bentley, turning it from an old-man’s car into the choice of most Premiership footballers.

Jaguar is the problem child. Ford never really got it right — some think the brand can never recover. The bidders clearly don’t think so, and one I spoke to last week waxed lyrical about the prospect of repeating the Bentley turnround.

It’s possible, but it will take a herculean effort. Rebuilding the Jaguar brand will require the new owner to take a long-term view, which is why most insiders think Ratan Tata, head of the Tata group and a real car nut, is the likely winner.

Testing Tesco

EXPERTS have misread the potential effect on Tesco of last week’s Competition Commission report on supermarkets. From comments last week, you would have thought Tesco had been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Don’t be so sure. While Peter Freeman, the commission chairman, did not savage Tesco in the way many had expected, his nuanced report contains enough devil in its detail to give Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy a few sleepless nights.

Take, for example, Freeman’s proposals to change planning rules. He wants to ease the so-called “needs” test which stipulates that where you have a large enough supermarket to serve the local market you don’t need another. Next would come an introduction of a “competiton test” that would give new entrants first dibs on sites close to established stores.

In combination, the two changes would loosen Tesco’s grip on areas where it now enjoys close to a local monopoly. Rivals could lay siege to its strongholds and Tesco would be hampered in how it could respond.

There are also plans to force supermarkets to dispose of parts of their land bank, and since Tesco controls more sites for potential future development than all its rivals put together, these plans might seriously blunt the Leahy machine’s sharp edge.

Businessmen I spoke to this week were divided on the worth of the inquiry. Some think it right that powerful companies are curbed, while others think it is wrong to penalise a company for being better than its competitors.

Freeman has done a pretty good job at steering between the extremes. And Tesco perhaps realises it is running out of road in Britain. Four-fifths of its new space this year will be outside the UK. The fate of its American venture, which opens its doors to customers this week, may ultimately have more influence on the company’s future than the strictures of UK regulators.

Real dealmakers

AS a business journalist, I often find myself in the audience of some event or other listening to a politician, professor or tycoon lamenting the passing of the entrepreneurial spirit. Joe Public, it seems, is less enterprising, ambitious and determined than in the good old days

Next time I hear one of those speeches, I’ll walk out. It is obvious to me that the entrepreneurial spirit is not only alive and well in Britain, but is positively thriving.

I found this out on Tuesday when I helped judge a regional heat of The Entrepreneur Challenge , a competition run by Bank of Scotland Corporate and The Sunday Times.

For me the revelation was the quality of all five of the finalists, each with a compelling story to tell.

Hilary Devey, for example, the powerhouse behind Pall-Ex, a nationwide network of hauliers, toured the country in a battered Ford Scorpio to sign up member firms, overcoming along the way the resistance to a woman making waves in a male-dominated industry.

Brian Meredith, an IBM employee, thought Big Blue wasn’t giving good enough customer service, so started doing it himself from a bedroom in his house.

Stuart Hateley of the family firm Grayson Automotive is making a mockery of those who say that you can’t make money out of manufacturing by pushing ahead with clever niche production and plans for expansion in America.

Tony Killeen of Allpay.net came out of the services, started working as a bailiff, then realised many of his clients didn’t have bank accounts and needed another way to make payments.

And Will Chase . . . well, you can read all about him by clicking the link in the panel, left.

So forget anyone who tells you the UK lacks entrepreneurs. They don’t know what they are talking about.

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