A last-minute wrinkle — GM's request for $415 million in emergency funding for Opel — nearly scuttled talks on Thursday and persuaded Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne to walk away from the table. Fiat was also said to be dismayed to learn that Opel's losses this year could total several billion euros — much higher than originally forecast.
Magna, based in Aurora, Ontario, agreed to provide the short-term funding with backing from the German government, and has said it was prepared to inject another $1 billion into Opel. Berlin has also agreed to provide up to $2.1 billion in bridge loans until a deal is consummated.
On Friday, Marchionne told reporters: "I think we will just keep on focusing on what we have. We're in the final days of restructuring the Chrysler transaction, and I think that our objective is to close that deal. If the Opel transaction is not available to Fiat, life will move on."
Magna is heading a consortium that includes Russia's state-controlled Sberbank and the automaker GAZ, owned by 41-year-old Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Last fall, the ongoing credit crunch in Russia forced Deripaska to relinquish his 20-percent stake in Magna to creditors.
It was reported that Magna would control 20 percent of Opel and Sberbank would control 35 percent, leaving 35 percent in the hands of GM and 10 percent with Opel employees. It is not known what stake, if any, that GAZ would have, but Magna boss Frank Stronach and Deripaska are said to maintain close relations.
An Austrian subsidiary of Magna, called Magna Steyr, does small-scale specialty assembly of such vehicles as the BMW X3 and will add assembly of the Aston Martin Rapide later this year and the Porsche Boxster and Cayman in 2012.
GAZ several years ago bought the tooling for the Dodge Stratus sedan and last year began building an updated version called Siber at its plant in Nizhny Novgorod.
In Russia, Opel previously had cooperated with a rival of GAZ, a company called AvtoVAZ, based in Togliatti. Originally established with technical assistance from Fiat, AvtoVAZ later built a version of the Opel Astra, rebadged in Russia as the Chevrolet Viva.
Inside Line says: As GM attempts to slash its operations and cut its losses just ahead of a planned bankruptcy filing next week, life is about to get much more complicated for Opel. — Paul Lienert, Correspondent
Add A Comment »