Manganese Bronze Holdings

Manganese Bronze Holdings plc (MBH) was the holding company of LTI Limited. The firm's sole business in its final years as a company was London black taxicab manufacturing through the LTI subsidiary.

The Manganese Bronze and Brass Co was founded in 1881, incorporated in 1882 and originally made ship propellers, operating from factories in London. By World War II, it was also extruding and rolling specialised alloys, and in the 1950s expanded into light alloy product manufacturing. In the early 1960s, it shortened its name to Manganese Bronze and became an important conglomerator of British motorcycle marques. The company acquired the subsidiary Carbodies in 1973, which was involved in the design, development and production of taxicabs. This subsidiary eventually became LTI Limited, and traded first as London Taxis International and then as The London Taxi Company. The sale of its components division in 2003 left the company with LTI Limited as its only operating division.

In October 2012, MBH entered administration, having not made a profit since 2007. The Chinese automotive manufacturer Geely, which already owned 20% of the shares in LTI Limited, the company's only business, agreed to purchase LTI's principal assets and trade from the administrator to save the business and continue the production of taxis in Coventry. The new holding company was named The London Taxi Corporation, and it traded as The London Taxi Company (as LTI had done). This successor company was renamed to London EV Company in 2017.