The government has been called on to prevent the acquisition of UK-based aerospace company AIM Altitude by a Chinese organisation with state ties.
AIM Altitude designs aircraft interiors for Boeing and Airbus. The Bournemouth-based firm has been owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) since 2016 when the Chinese state-controlled organisation bought AIM for £155m.
Last week, however, AIM went through a restructuring, being purchased by a different division of AVIC, called ACS UK, a process that has left all of AIM’s projects owned and controlled by the Chinese government.
Following this, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of the Tory party, has called for a government review of AIM Altitude’s ownership.
The Conservative MP said: “This absolutely needs to be called in and the government has got to get off its backside.”
Fellow Conservative MP Bob Seely shared this view, saying “It should be reviewed now, and I don’t understand why it wasn’t reviewed sooner.”
Seely added: “China wants to know as much about our defence industries as possible. We need to be less naïve about totalitarian states.”
UKTN has contacted AIM Altitude for comment. Its website is currently displaying a message that it is “undergoing maintenance”. It is unclear if this is related to the Chinese takeover plans.
Latest call for national security measure
The government has the power to block foreign takeovers of UK companies if there is a potential risk to the country under the National Security and Investment Act of 2021.
The act allowed Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene in the takeover of Wales-based semiconductor plant Newport Wafer Fab by China-based company Nexperia.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng announced in May that a full security assessment into the Newport Wafer Fab takeover would be taking place.
“We welcome overseas investment, but it must not threaten Britain’s national security,” said Kwarteng at the time.
The Newport Wafer Fab security review was approved last year, with the extended gap between approval and the review actually taking place drawing criticism from government officials.
Cross-bench peer Lord Alton expressed concerns that the sale would make the government “customers of the People’s Republic of China”.
Alton added: “It is about national resilience, and it is about whether or not we wish to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the People’s Republic of China.”
More recently, the National Security and Investment Act has been considered as a mechanism to force Japan’s SoftBank to select London for the public listing of Cambridge-headquartered chip designer Arm, instead of New York.
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