LONDON, April 23: More than 200 firms from places such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, India and Russia have voiced an interest in buying parts of MG Rover, the failed British car maker’s administrators said on Saturday.

“Interest has been expressed by potential buyers from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, India, Russia and China as well as from the UK,” joint administrator Tony Lomas said.

“We have had over 200 expressions of interest and we will be looking at all of these,” he added.

MG Rover, whose roots go back a century, faces the end of the road after administrators just over a week ago axed more than 80 per cent of its 6,100 workers when a tie-up failed with China’s Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation.

Reports have since said Iranian state-owned car maker Saipa, along with Iran Khodro — the largest automaker in Iran and the Middle East — were considering buying up MG Rover.

Saipa, however, on Saturday, denied the report.

“We were contacted by Rover a month ago. But because of the undetermined situation of the British Rover company, we are not intending to purchase it,” Saipa Managing Director Ahmad Ghale Bani told the student news agency ISNA.

In a sign of MG Rover’s ails, the administrators announced on Friday night that a further 200 workers, who had been kept on at its Birmingham-based Longbridge car plant for the past week, have been made redundant.

Meanwhile, hundreds of MG Rover supporters were expected to drive in convoy through London on St George’s Day on Saturday in a show of support for the collapsed British car giant.

Drivers of MG and Rover cars are expected to converge on the capital in a gesture of solidarity with the thousands of workers who have been affected.—AFP