From the Financial Times:
Toyota will keep making cars at its plant in the English Midlands even if the UK votes to leave the European Union, chief executive Akio Toyoda said in a boost for campaigners wanting a Brexit.
The comments by Mr Toyoda, the great-grandson of Toyota’s founder, will offer reassurance to the thousands of staff at its assembly plant in Burnaston near Derby and its engine plant at Deeside in North Wales.
But his remarks will be a blow to the campaigners for the UK to remain in the EU, and also to David Cameron who last November at a private meeting in Downing Street urged non-British chief executives of some of the UK’s biggest companies to put their weight behind his EU renegotiation.
One of the In campaigners’ key arguments is that an exit will damage Britain’s economic prospects and lead to an outflow of corporate investment.
Senior bankers from HSBC and Barclays last week said that, although Brexit would be expensive and disruptive for the UK’s financial services sector, it was unlikely to unseat the City of London as Europe’s main financial centre.
Speaking to the Financial Times for today’s joint Nikkei-FT special report on Japan, Mr Toyoda said his predecessors buried a time capsule at the Burnaston plant 25 years ago, and the company would still be there to open it in the year 2090.