GM’s Tom Wilkinson was asked by AFP today about recent talk that some of GM Europe’s divisions might be split off and sold.
It was a response to recent talk (that I hadn’t heard) about Opel dealers looking to form some sort of alliance and make a bid to keep the company in German hands should the mothership fall over.
Wilkinson had this to say:
General Motors said Thursday its German Opel nameplate is “not for sale” despite the perilous situation of the US auto giant.
Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman told AFP that some global brands like Opel “are so integrated into GM’s global operations, we would not or could not sell them. Opel is not for sale.”
Any talk of a sale of the German unit “is just purely speculative,” he added.
Similarly (almost identically, in fact) with Saab:
Wilkinson also said that Saab, a Swedish brand acquired by GM, is also “completely integrated into GM’s global operations,” and that “any talks about selling any of the brands are purely speculative.”
——
As many have said, if something were going down, the company would play it very close to their chests and we’d be the last to know.
But I tend to believe this story anyway. There are certain parts of GM that are just woven too tightly into the fabric of the company to be split and sold off. I’m sure that’s the case with Opel, which is the core of GM Europe. I’m not so sure about Saab, but they’d fetch so little for it and it has so much potential that they may as well keep it.
–
Keep it (Saab) they can, but enough with the strangulation and suffocation. As they say, “use it or lose it”. Nineteen years is too long for GM to twiddle it’s proverbial thumbs and think how it might use use Saab. The only thing GM seems to use Saab for, is to poach it’s innovations and use them on much lesser cars.
I think if GM Europe’s range was predominant in the US there would be far less problems. Perhaps GM North America should be more integrated into GM Europe rather than the other way around?
I also think that they won’t sell saab. There is simply nobody to sell it to.
I’m just afraid that they will simply stop investing in saab and let saab starve to death.
Saab depend on Opel to build cars, but does Opel depend on GM? Just how much of the parts come from GM factories outside Europe? Is Opel so integrated into GM’s global operations that a sale would be impossible? I’m not so sure…
The question is whether the sale would generate cash.
In the case of Opel, it would but yes I think it would gut the company.
In the case of Saab, it probably wouldn’t generate any cash, so not worth doing.
Unless, Saab is a net drain on cash, and therefore a sale could make sense to slow the bleeding.