Hundreds bid to buy bits of Rover

German carmaker BMW owns the Rover brand name

Administrators for MG Rover say there have been more than 200 expressions of interest by car manufacturers in buying parts of the stricken car firm.

Joint administrator Tony Lomas said there had been enquiries from south east Asia, the Middle East, India, Russia, China and from within the UK.

Reports say Iranian companies Saipa and Iran Khodro have expressed interest.

But both state-owned firms have since released statements denying they want to purchase Rover.

Mr Lomas said the administrators would be considering all the expressions of interest they had received.

Meanwhile the Iranian embassy in London has said that officials from car manufacturers in Iran were planning to hold talks about buying the rights and assets of MG Rover.

Intellectual rights

According to a semi-official Iranian news agency, ISNA, the companies in question were the state-owned manufacturers, Iran Khodro and SAIPA.

Iran Khodro is the largest carmaker in the Middle East, while SAIPA is the second-biggest carmaker in Iran.

But the deputy managing director of Iran Khodro, Mojtaba Shivapour, has issued a statement denying the report.

He said: "Iran Khodro has no such plan to purchase the British company."

And the managing director of Saipa, Ahmad Ghale Bani, made a similar denial in an interview with the Iranian student news agency ISNA.

He said: "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."

But it is possible that a smaller private Iranian company called Dastaan may still be interested, said BBC correspondent in Tehran, Frances Harrison.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Industry in Iran confirmed that Dastaan has obtained permission to start up a Rover production line in Iran.

It was not clear how attractive the Dastaan offer will be to Rover because the company was not very well established in Iran, said our correspondent.

Redundancy money

MG Rover went into administration on 8 April after the collapse of talks over a possible rescue tie-up with China's largest car marker, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC).

Iran Khodro makes Peugeot cars under licence

The BBC has since been told that SAIC, which owns the intellectual rights to the models, plans to build Rover cars in China.

What SAIC does not yet have is the right to use the Rover name. This is still held by BMW, which owned Rover from 1994 to 2000.

The Chinese are said to be confident they can secure from BMW the right to call the Shanghai-built cars Rovers.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has made £150m available to help those made redundant at MG Rover and the companies that supply it, a move backed by both Conservative leader Michael Howard, and Charles Kennedy from the Liberal Democrats.

About 5,000 of the 6,000 MG Rover employees have been made redundant since Rover collapsed, and now administrators for the stricken car maker say that a further 203 workers must go.