Germany is examining the carmaker Opel’s request for government credit guarantees, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said.
“We are looking into it to see whether it’s appropriate,” Steinbrueck said on Friday night in Washington on the sidelines of the G20 summit of developed and emerging economies.
Opel — a unit of General Motors Corp, which itself is seeking a US government bailout — said earlier on Friday that it wanted the loan guarantees from German federal and state governments after a sharp downturn in orders but insisted it did not need cash injections.
The German-based carmaker did not name a sum for the guarantees it wanted, but Kurt Beck, the prime minister of the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said it was about 1 billion euros (US$1.27 billion).
Steinbrueck said a meeting between Opel representatives and the four US states where Opel has factories would take place on Tuesday, adding that the talks were still at an initial stage.
“The goal of the current talks is to ready security for additional loans because the global financial situation of parent company General Motors has worsened,” Klaus Franz, head of GM’s works council, said on Friday in a statement distributed by Ruesselsheim, Germany-based Opel’s press department.
The request is for loan guarantees if “GM’s financial situation were to intensify” and affect Opel, the German unit said in the statement.
Opel, which targets mainly low-income buyers, has been among the automakers hardest hit by the credit crunch.
The brand’s European sales have dropped 12 percent this year, more than twice the industrywide decline, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
In the statement, managing director Hans Demant said that “we want to secure Opel’s competitiveness in this difficult situation.”
The carmaker, which is known as Vauxhall in the UK, said that it would use funds from government aid to develop vehicles and for equipment for its German factories.
“Under no circumstances would the money be used outside Europe,” Opel said in the statement.
Demant said Opel was only requesting credit guarantees. “At this time, we have no liquidity problems,” he said.
Opel, which employs 25,700 workers, and other German carmakers, such as Daimler and BMW, have announced temporary closures of factories to cut costs after a huge drop in orders.
In the US, GM, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC would receive US$25 billion in loans out of a US$700 billion financial bailout package approved earlier this year under legislation that US Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan are writing. US President George W. Bush’s administration opposes using those funds for the auto companies.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS