Word: gm
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...talks stalled and Merkel declared the entire GM-Opel mess to be "chefsache," or a matter for the boss. After lengthy and tense talks, GM negotiators finally seemed to agree to the German plan...
...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...
...GM's 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...
...intervene. Her rival for the chancellery, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Foreign Minister in the grand coalition government that joins Merkel's Christian Democrats and his Social Democrats, called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging her to get involved. But the message from Washington is that it's up to GM to make its own investment decisions. (See pictures of Obama in Germany...
...German commentators have criticized the almost amateurish way in which Merkel and Steinmeier have risked turning GM and Opel's misery into a transatlantic dispute. Neither GM nor the Obama Administration, which appointed 10 of GM's current board members, appears to like the idea of handing Opel - and GM patents - to a consortium at least partially controlled by Russian oligarchs. "Neither the Chancellor's phone call with the American President nor the Foreign Minister's with Mrs. Clinton impressed anyone," wrote the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in a commentary published on Aug. 26. "It is questionable whether their decision...