FORD is to sell car repair chain Kwik-Fit for a third of the price the motor company paid for the operation three years ago.
The Edinburgh-based business is going to private equity group CVC Capital Partners for £330m.
CVC said yesterday that it was too early to say whether there would be any effect on jobs.
The move is part of Ford's attempt to raise £656.2m this year from the sale of non-core assets. Ford is to keep a 19 per cent stake in the Kwik-Fit business, which it acquired in June 1999 for £1bn.
Kwik-Fit was set up in 1971 by Sir Tom Farmer, in Edinburgh, and is now Europe's largest maintenance and light repair operation with 2,500 service centres and about 11,000 employees.
The deal should be completed by the end of this year and will leave Ford with a one-off charge of £328.1m in its third-quarter results, because of the lower value of the sale.
Ford, which has been hit by the economic slowdown, has also agreed the sale of repair business Collision Team of America to a private businessman.
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