Lord Swraj Paul, the chairman of the steel and engineering giant Caparo Group, has said the global credit crunch has affected his company whose profits may fall from the projected 80-90 million pounds this year as "things have really nose-dived" since September.
The 77-year-old NRI industrialist, however, did not specify the extent of fall in the profits.
"This is the most severe downturn I have experienced in the 40-odd years of my working life. In the past two months, the market has really gone downhill and it's likely that we will have to lay off workers," Lord Paul told 'The Sunday Times' in an interview, replying to a specific query on how has the credit crunch affected him.
The chairman of the 1.5 billion pound Caparo Group said it was difficult to know at this stage what the longer-term impact would be. "I think we will have a better idea early next year. I don't think we've seen the worse of it yet."
"To survive in the manufacturing industry you have to be innovative and improve your technology, which is what my sons have been doing. There is some good news with the weakening pound, though. A lot of the business in Europe is picking up because of the strong euro so export sales there are strong."
When asked about how much profit he had made last year, Lord Paul, the British ambassador for overseas business, said: "I don't have the figure in front of me, but I would say we had a profit of about 40 million pounds to 50 million pounds.
"We were heading for almost 80 million pounds to 90 million pounds until the end of September (this year), though, but things have really nose-dived since then."