Word: gm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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General Motors Corp. is pressing the Bush Administration for more than $10 billion in immediate government assistance, which would help shore up its tattered balance sheet and provide the cash required for a takeover of ailing Chrysler. The two companies are already close to a deal that would put GM in control of Chrysler. That would leave Chrysler boss Robert Nardelli, brought in to save the company, out of a job. "We can acknowledge that we have been in contact with a variety of federal officials for some time during this extraordinary and difficult economic period," said GM spokesman...
Emblematic of the troubles that the once mighty Big Three face are the merger discussions taking place between GM and Chrysler, which is controlled by the New York private equity firm of Cerberus. Any GM/Chrysler merger would very likely involve what amounts to battlefield surgery, requiring the traumatic amputation of several factories, hundreds of dealerships across the country and thousands of blue and white collar jobs. GM, which has been fighting rumors of bankruptcy since mid-summer, has had a hard time lining up the financing that would be needed for any deal with Chrysler, even though the U.S.Congress recently...
...chopping 25% of its white collar work force, about 5,000 people, and a like number of contract workers. "These are truly unimaginable times for our industry," said CEO Robert Nardelli in the statement. "We continue to be in the most difficult economic period most of us can remember." GM boss Rick Wagoner told employees in an Email that the company has to make more cuts and urged anyone on the retirement fence to get off it and go, since buyout packages are being reduced. To conserve cash, GM will also stop matching 401(k) contributions for executives...
...Imminent bankruptcy concerns at GM/Ford appear overdone and any potential GM-Chrysler deal that enhances liquidity at the new entity may lead to a rally in GM shares as well as the shares if its dependent suppliers. But we increasingly view such a rally as potentially tenuous," said J.P. Morgan's Himanshu Pate in a recent note to investors still hanging on to shares trading at historic lows. That no longer includes Kirk Kerkorian. The Los Angeles mogul, who has made a fortune buying and selling auto stocks over the past two decades, dumped his big block of Ford shares...
Dave Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, offers some grounds for optimism. Once the downturn passes, he says, there will be a lot of pent-up demand for new more fuel-efficient vehicles. GM is feverishly working on the Chevrolet Volt, an electric car that could go a long way towards changing the way Americans think about such cars. Even Chrysler is promising to deliver seven new models...