Jaguar Land Rover Gets $2 Billion U.K. Government Loan Guarantee After Cyberattack

By Dominic Chopping

The U.K. government has stepped in to provide financial support for Jaguar Land Rover as the British automaker reels from a cyberattack that has crippled production for around a month.

The government will underwrite a 1.5 billion-pound ($2.01 billion) loan guarantee in a bid to support the company's cash reserves and help it pay suppliers.

The loan will be provided by a commercial bank and is backed by the government's export credit agency. It will be paid back over five years.

"Jaguar Land Rover is an iconic British company which employs tens of thousands of people," U.K. Treasury Chief Rachel Reeves said in a statement Sunday.

"Today we are protecting thousands of those jobs with up to 1.5 billion pounds in additional private finance, helping them support their supply chain and protect a vital part of the British car industry," she added.

The U.K. automaker, owned by India's Tata Motors, discovered a cyberattack late last month, forcing the company to shut down its computer systems and halt production.

The company behind Land Rover, Jaguar and Range Rover models, has been forced to repeatedly extend the production shutdown over the past few weeks as it races to restart systems safely with the help of cybersecurity experts flown in from around the globe, the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre and law enforcement.

Last week, the company began a gradual restart of its operations, bringing some IT systems back online. It has informed suppliers and retail partners that sections of its digital network is back up and running, and processing capacity for invoicing has been increased as it works to quickly clear the backlog of payments to suppliers.

JLR has U.K. plants in Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, in addition to Halewood in Merseyside. It is one of the U.K.'s largest exporters and a major employer, employing 34,000 directly in its U.K. operations. It also operates the largest supply chain in the U.K. automotive sector, much of it made up of small- and medium-sized enterprises, and employing around 120,000 people, according to the government.

Labor unions had warned that thousands of jobs in the JLR supply chain were at risk due to the disruption and had urged the government to step in with a furlough plan to support them.

U.K. trade union Unite, which represents thousands of workers employed at JLR and throughout its supply chain, said the government's loan guarantee is an important first step.

"The money provided must now be used to ensure job guarantees and to also protect skills and pay in JLR and its supply chain," Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said in a statement.

Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 29, 2025 04:48 ET (08:48 GMT)