Germany reached a landmark deal with Canadian auto parts group Magna, General Motors (GM) and governments to save carmaker Opel from the imminent bankruptcy of its US parent, German leaders said yesterday.
German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told journalists waiting outside German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s offices for the six-hour meeting that a comprehensive deal had been agreed.
“I can tell you that a deal has been reached,” Steinbrueck said shortly after 2am, adding that the deal included a 1.5 billion euro (US$2.1 billion) bridge financing for Opel and a trustee model for the German carmaker.
Siegfried Wolf, the co-chief executive of Magna, cautioned there were still details to be ironed out.
“In five weeks’ time we should have the formal signing of the contract,” he said.
Hesse State Prime Minister Roland Koch said, for example, the state assemblies in both Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia — two of four states with Opel plants — would still have to endorse it. He said he hoped that could be completed by today.
The leaders of all four states have endorsed the deal.
Steinbrueck said US Treasury representatives at the meeting had also endorsed the agreement.
German Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg renewed his reservations about risks involved with the rescue, but added there would also have been risks if Opel declared bankruptcy.
Magna and Opel had presented their plan to senior German officials and representatives of the US Treasury to win their support and ensure the release of the financing that Opel desperately needs to survive over the coming months.
An agreement between GM and Magna is a first step toward securing the future of Ruesselsheim-based Opel, which has been under GM’s control for the past 80 years and traces its roots in Germany back to the 19th century.
“I think this is the start of a new future for Opel, for the workers, the company and the brand,” GM Europe head Carl-Peter Forster told journalists.
He added, however, that there would still be some hard negotiations on the fine-print ahead.
The German government has been scrambling to safeguard Opel’s future before GM files for bankruptcy, a step which is expected to come by tomorrow.
A first round of talks in Berlin collapsed amid mutual recriminations on Thursday morning, prompting the German government to set a new round of negotiations for Friday.
Italian carmaker Fiat, Magna’s main rival in the battle for Opel, pulled out of talks, leaving the door open for Magna, a company that was started by Austrian emigre Frank Stronach in a Toronto garage nearly half a century ago.
Magna plans to use Opel to push into Russia, Europe’s fastest-growing car market before the economic crisis hit.
The company, which has 70,000 employees in 25 countries, supplies components and systems to many of the world’s leading carmakers, including fuel tanks and radiator grilles for the Mercedes-Benz C-Class and fuel filters for the BMW X3.
Speaking to reporters in Montreal, Fiat chief executive Sergio Marchionne had earlier appeared to concede defeat to Magna, saying his focus was on the company’s deal with Chrysler.
“If the Opel transaction is not available to Fiat, life will move on,” he said.
A stumbling block had been US Treasury opposition to German demands that Opel assets be temporarily placed in a trust to protect them from GM creditors. Germany now will release the bridge financing to tide Opel over until a merger is completed.
Based in Ruesselsheim near Frankfurt, Opel employs 25,000 staff in four German plants.
It is part of a GM Europe operation that employs more than 50,000, with car manufacturing plants in Spain, Poland, Belgium and Britain, where Opel cars are sold under the Vauxhall brand, as well as engine and parts sites such as Aspern near Vienna.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained