Word: european
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...talks with Opel owners General Motors back on track, Merkel is reportedly ready to abandon her previous plan to force GM to sell a controlling stake in its European business to a consortium of Canadian-Austrian car-parts maker Magna International and Russia's Sberbank. According to the German tabloid Bild, the German government has told GM's chief negotiator, John Smith, that Berlin will consider GM's preferred investor, the Belgian industrial group RHJI, as long as it teams up with a partner from the automotive industry. (See TIME's photo-essay "GM's Eight Great Hopes...
...Over the past few days, though, everything has come undone again. GM's management, which now includes U.S. government appointees after Washington's massive bailout of the Detroit firm, is split. Some on the board want GM to sell its European operations and focus on the U.S. market. And GM cannot use money from U.S. taxpayers to restructure Opel. (See pictures of General Motors factory-scapes...
...chairman, Ed Whitacre, isn't convinced that a sale is in the company's best interests. He still sees GM as a global manufacturer and is determined to retake the No. 1 spot from rival Toyota. To do so, GM needs a European manufacturing base. At the very least, GM wants to avoid creating a new competitor by providing the dowry for a tie-up among Magna, Sberbank and Opel. So on Aug. 21, the GM board rejected Merkel's plan and sent point man Smith back to Berlin. (Read "Busting Out: German Pol Plays the Cleavage Card...
...exploring other options, including the possibility of raising money from other European sources. According to a report in the Times of London, U.K. business secretary Peter Mandelson is offering GM some $800 million if GM could guarantee the 5,500 jobs at its Vauxhall unit. Last week, Mandelson slammed the Germans for trying to buy protection for their car workers at the expense of GM employees in the U.K., Spain and elsewhere in Europe. (Read "Is This Detroit's Last Winter...
...With this new legislation, Britain joins the growing number of European countries that have tackled legal highs over the past several years. For now, dozens of U.K.-based websites and shops are still free to market and sell alternatives to illegal drugs and to ship them to any country that doesn't yet prohibit them. It's these legal drug dealers that the British ban seeks to target. "The priority will be to chase suppliers rather than users," says Martin Barnes, head of Drugscope, a nonprofit that studies drug use in the U.K., and a member of the advisory board...