launch of a £432 million rights issue. On 25 September 1991 BAe directors led by CEO Richard Evans ousted the Chairman Professor Sir Roland Smith in a move described by The Independent as "one of the most spectacular and brutal boardroom coups witnessed in many years." Evans described the troubles as a confluence of events: "our property company [Arlington Securities] was hit with a lousy market. Sales of the Rover Group sank by about a fifth and losses mounted. The government's defence spending volumes underwent a major review. Losses in our commercial aerospace division increased dramatically with the recession in the airline industry." In mid-1992, BAe wrote off £1 billion of assets, largely as part of redundancies and restructuring of its regional aircraft division. This was the largest asset write-off in UK corporate history. General Electric Company (GEC), later to sell its defence interests to BAe, came close to acquiring BAe at this time. BAe cut 47% of its workforce (60,000 out of 127,000), 40,000 of which were from the regional aircraft division. Evans decided to sell non-core business activities which included The Rover Group, Arlington Securities, BAe Corporate Jets, BAe Communications and Ballast Nedam. Although the rationale of diversification was sound (to shield the company from cyclical aerospace and defence markets) the struggling company could not afford to continue the position: "We simply could not afford to carry two core businesses, cars and aerospace. At one point Rover was eating up about £2 billion of our banking capacity." BAe Corporate Jets Ltd and Arkansas Aerospace Inc were sold to Raytheon in 1993. In 1994, the Rover Group was sold to BMW and British Aerospace Space Systems was sold to Matra Marconi Space. In 1998, BAe's shareholding of Orange plc was reduced to 5%. The Orange shareholding was a legacy of the 30% stake in Hutchison Telecommunications (UK) Ltd. In 1994, BAeSEMA, Siemens Plessey and GEC-Marconi formed UKAMS Limited as part of the Principal Anti-Air Missile System (PAAMS) consortium. UKAMS would become a wholly owned subsidiary of BAe Dynamics in 1998. In 1995, Saab Military Aircraft and BAe signed an agreement for the joint development and marketing of the export version of the JAS 39 Gripen. In 1996, BAe and Matra Defense agreed to merge their missile businesses into a joint venture called Matra BAe Dynamics. In 1997, BAe joined the Lockheed Martin X-35 Joint Strike Fighter team. The following