Despite denying that the issue of ownership was even "under debate" in August 2015, a government official was photographed entering Downing Street with a document setting out options for a sell-off just a month later.
"Shorts hope for a sell-off -- it's over," a day trader called "Stimemarket" wrote.
On both sides of the Atlantic, investors had been bracing for a sell-off on Monday, after Standard & Poor's stripped the United States of its top credit rating.
If central bankers are persuaded to keep rates steady because they think the economy has reached equilibrium, stocks could be primed for a sell-off.
On Sunday, The Times profiled the market forecaster Robert Prechter, who's convinced that the stock market is headed for a sell-off that will send the Dow Jones average below not 10,000, but 1,000.
For a sell-off plan to stay revenue-neutral, it would have to sharply raise taxes on alcohol, including a new tax on alcoholic drinks in restaurants and bars.
Dozens of former employees, reporters, television crews and gawkers, many of them unemployed technology workers, gathered in late October at the company's shuttered headquarters near San Francisco for a sell-off of computer and office equipment.
But a civil servant accidentally provided evidence that the government was looking at such a plan when they were photographed entering Downing Street with a document setting out options for a sell-off.
Just two weeks after Whittingdale's first appearance before the committee, a government official inadvertently revealed the privatisation plans after being photographed entering Downing Street with a document setting out options for a sell-off.
In a statement issued tonight, after a report in the Munich newspaper Suddeutsche, BMW said that plans for a sell-off were "one of the imaginable scenarios" that will be presented to the supervisory board on Thursday.
