“I’d find it very regrettable,” Krueger said Tuesday in a briefing at the Geneva International Motor Show. “What it might mean is hard to tell. BMW has MINI, Rolls-Royce and an engine plant in the UK. It's critical that there’d be a trade agreement - and what sort.”
Britain is a valued member of the EU as “a driver for market liberalisation and other reforms,” the CEO said.
Oxford-based MINI has been owned since 1994 by BMW, which revived the brand with a new-generation car in 2001, while the German company bought licensing rights to Rolls-Royce in 1998, setting up the ultra-luxury brand in Goodwood, southern England.
A clutch of other carmakers also used the Swiss expo to register their concern about a breakup of the EU, with Daimler AG CEO Dieter Zetsche echoing his BMW counterpart in saying a British exit would be “very, very regrettable.”
The CEOs of PSA Peugeot Citroen and General Motors Co.'s Opel, which makes cars in Britain under the Vauxhall name, warned of a likely slump in sales tied to a weakening in the pound, leading to an earnings dip. The country is Europe's second-biggest car market and the third-biggest producer.
“Prices will go up to compensate for a weak currency, like in the emerging countries,” Peugeot CEO Carlos Tavares said at the show. “The market as a whole will be impacted.”
A manufacturing presence in Britain at least provides a degree of hedging against currency changes, though sterling “still is an issue,” said Opel head Karl-Thomas Neumann.
At Ford Motor Co., which ended vehicle assembly in Britain in 2013 but still employs 14,000 people in the country, with engine and transmission plants there, European chief Jim Farley said an exit after June 23's vote would be “unprecedented” and that it's too early to assess the likely consequences.
The comments come as Prime Minister David Cameron seeks to convince voters that a deal struck with EU counterparts warrants staying in the bloc. JPMorgan said Tuesday an exit could halve Britain's growth rate to 1 percent in the year after an “out” decision, and weaken sterling as much as 10 percent.
