For tax purposes, its role is simply to provide services to the European master company in Luxembourg.
But it was bought not by Phoenix Venture Holdings, the master company which owned the MG Rover car company, but a standalone private partnership.
Amazon.com Inc, the US master company, had already withdrawn its interest in the UK operation when it transferred its holding in December 2005.
It appeared that PVH was orchestrating a systematic realignment of its businesses, which ensured that economic benefit flowed directly to the master company.
When Phoenix Venture Holdings, (PVH) the four men's master company, and MG Rover's parent bought Rover Financial Services, it said the acquisition was a significant achievement.
Most of the "active" companies relate to the old Rover empire or companies under the umbrella of Phoenix Venture Holdings, the master company set up to orchestrate the four's complex business activities.
So the parts business was owned by PVH not MG Rover; the financial services business was bought by an independent company, MGR Capital, associated with the Phoenix Four; and the property business came under the master company umbrella.
MG Rover may now be in liquidation, but Phoenix Venture Holdings (PVH), the master company owned by the Phoenix Four and the ultimate owner of the car company, is not.
There was barely a flicker of publicity when the planned flotation of Formula One Holdings, the master company that controls the sport, turned him and his 39-year-old Croatian-born wife, Slavica, into billionaires overnight.
On the Istanbul stock exchange, where Koc Holding's shares are traded alongside those of eight subsidiaries, the master company trades at a discount of between 2% and 12% of the net asset value of its holdings, reckons Erste Group Research, part of an Austrian bank.
