GM keeps Adam Opel AG

[LeonOfTheDead]

Goodbye Magna, it has been fishy since the beginning.
GM board decided it was a better idea to keep their European arm. no words where GM will find the required 3 B $ to restructure Opel, or how many people jobs will be lost, even if it should be remembered that Magna at first said it was about to cut 2.200 jobs, and eventually said there would have been no less than 10.000 cuts, or something pretty similar.

one of the sources:

GM board opts to keep Opel - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091103/bs_nm/us_opel_gm)

[Ferrer]

I think that GM and Opel were far to closely integrated to make this a good sale. The other day I saw the new Buick Regal, which is exactly a rebadged Opel Insignia. If they had become separate entities, they would've had lots of similar problems probably.

We'll see how everything ends up.

[LeonOfTheDead]

Regardless of how much GM and Opel were tied, the whole Magna deal wasn't just right, the whole point of promising German money only if Magna would have been picked was fishy, and it wasn't even the best offer by a fair margin.

I always thought the Fiat offer was the best (regardless of how large Fiat would have been, for better or worse), especially when they said it wouldn't have made any sense to improve the offer as it wouldn't have been remunerative anymore.
Since now one raised the BS flag, i took those words for accurate, therefore any offer better than those placed at that time were just wrong.

Indeed Magna itself proved that trying to cut 6 times more jobs.

Probably GM never really wanted to sell Opel on one hand, and on the other some Germans were far too happy to use this from a political and social point of view.

I'd have been pretty curious to know what the EU commission would have said about the Magna deal if it was finalized.

[Ferrer]

Can you imagine what would've happened in the EU blocked the Magna sale? That may be one of the reasons why in the end GM pulled off of the deal, since they might have ended with Opel in anycase, and a difficult to sell Opel at that.

It was indeed fishy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Magna deal wasn't all supported by economic reasons itself, and more by (german) political reasons. IIRC, all the jobs to be cut were outside Germany and some models were even to be moved back to Germany, like the Corsa.

On the other hand I wonder how will that affect General Motors now. Will they try another option in the short or mid term, or will they keep Opel in the long term?

[LeonOfTheDead]

I'd personally keep Opel, it was barely the only brand working and a good one too.
They already have something good like the Insignia, the Corsa and the Astra. Even what they didn't design can be used to learn designing the next gen, so I'd be sensible to use it as much as they can.

my 2 italian cents.

[henk4]

Can you imagine what would've happened in the EU blocked the Magna sale? That may be one of the reasons why in the end GM pulled off of the deal, since they might have ended with Opel in anycase, and a difficult to sell Opel at that.

It was indeed fishy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Magna deal wasn't all supported by economic reasons itself, and more by (german) political reasons. IIRC, all the jobs to be cut were outside Germany and some models were even to be moved back to Germany, like the Corsa.

On the other hand I wonder how will that affect General Motors now. Will they try another option in the short or mid term, or will they keep Opel in the long term?

The EU would only have blocked the Magna deal if the German state aid would have been directed to German based parts of Opel only. That would have been considered illegal state support. But now that the elections in Germany are over, the willingness of Merkel cs to provide support to GM will be far less.

[Wouter Melissen]

A bold move from GM but it may come back to bite them in the near future. The German government is not very happy and is already asking for their money back.

[Ferrer]

The EU would only have blocked the Magna deal if the German state aid would have been directed to German based parts of Opel only. That would have been considered illegal state support. But now that the elections in Germany are over, the willingness of Merkel cs to provide support to GM will be far less.
Which was the case before the election, wasn't it? It also sounds very fishy the fact that Merkel wanted to keep the details of the state aid secret, at least before the elections.

[LeonOfTheDead]

Which was the case before the election, wasn't it? It also sounds very fishy the fact that Merkel wanted to keep the details of the state aid secret, at least before the elections.

No wait, I thought that was pretty clear since the beginning.

[Ferrer]

No wait, I thought that was pretty clear since the beginning.
Well if you want to keep something secret it may because people outside the deal may not be very happy with the conditions. Hence the secretness.

[LeonOfTheDead]

Well if you want to keep something secret it may because people outside the deal may not be very happy with the conditions. Hence the secretness.

I meant I think I heard/read of that since when even the other chinese company was in the game, so way before the elections were on.

[Ferrer]

Ze Germans aren't 'appy...

Germany not happy with GM abandoning Opel sale — Autoblog (http://www.autoblog.com/2009/11/04/germany-not-happy-with-gm-abandoning-opel-sale/)