Jeremy Corbyn will promise in a speech that a future Labour government would “intervene to prevent hostile takeovers” like investment firm Melrose’s £7.4bn bid for British manufacturing company GKN.



The Labour leader will tell delegates at the EEF manufacturing conference in London that if the party wins the next election it will “broaden the scope of the public interest test” to allow the government to stop takeovers that threaten to “destroy our industrial base”.

Corbyn will also call on Tuesday for a “fundamental rethink” of the financial sector to make it “the servant of industry not the master of us all”. “For 40 years, deregulated finance has progressively become more powerful,” he is expected to say. “Its dominance over industry, obvious and destructive; its control of politics, pernicious and undemocratic.”

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He will say that for a generation “politicians have served finance” instead of calling on finance to serve industry and increase Britain’s productivity.

“No more,” Corbyn is expected to say in his keynote address. “The next Labour government will be the first in 40 years to stand up for the real economy. We will take decisive action to make finance the servant of industry not the masters of us all.”

Corbyn will say that the power of finance has spread from the City of London to the industrial heartlands and threatens the future success of aerospace company GKN. He will warn that “a valuable company could be sacrificed so that a few can make a quick buck”.

“GKN, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious engineering firms, which employs 6,000 workers across the UK, contributes an estimated £1.3bn to the economy, pays a healthy £174m in tax each year and invested £561m in research and development in the UK alone,” Corbyn will say. “And yet GKN is currently facing a hostile, allegedly debt-fuelled takeover bid by Melrose, a company with a history of opportunistic asset-stripping.

“We rightly praise the growth of companies like GKN and their location in the UK. And yet when we are facing the possible destruction of that company, we are powerless to act. That’s why the next Labour government will broaden the scope of the ‘public interest test’, allowing government to intervene to prevent hostile takeovers which destroy our industrial base.”

Theresa May said that she was watching the proposed GKN takeover carefully and would act in the national interest if necessary.

“We are obviously watching this, we are monitoring this with care,” she said on Monday. “The secretary of state for business Greg Clark has spoken to both of the companies involved and as I said in the House of Commons when I was asked about this, we will always act in the national interest.”