Word: gm
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...hard the global automotive industry has been hit by the recession. The news of the Porsche-VW merger follows the announcement earlier this week by Italian carmaker Fiat that it wants to acquire U.S. automaker Chrysler, which the U.S. government forced into bankruptcy protection last week, and GM Europe. Fiat wants to merge with Chrysler and GM's Opel to create one of the largest car companies in the world. (See Chrysler's top ten moments...
...many individual investors hold GM shares either directly or through mutual funds that this will affect consumers who own a piece of GM. That was not an issue for Chrysler because it had no trading shares. The public had to watch GM struggle over the last two years to hold a price of $40, then $30, $20, $10, and finally just $2. The difference between Chrysler's demise and GM's is like the difference of a house burning down in the Wyoming wilderness versus a skyscraper on fire in Manhattan. Chrysler was never what GM was for many years...
...There are other practical problems that make a government-imposed Chapter 11 on GM much more troublesome than Chrysler's. The most financially pressing of these are the country's auto parts suppliers. They are facing extended plant closings at all three of the car companies and the bankruptcy filing of Chrysler. Pushing GM into court and risking an extended fight could cut the flow of orders to suppliers by enough that it would ruin a large number of the businesses. These businesses supply the assembly lines of foreign and domestic car manufacturing facilities around the country. The suspension...
...York Times has pointed out the amount of money owed to creditors at GM, some $27 billion, is about four times the amount that Chrysler had to deal with. The paper writes "General Motors' creditors number in the tens of thousands and include pension funds that bought the company's unsecured bonds." Will a court have more pity for that multitude than it would the few large firms that were Chrysler's creditors? Probably not, if justice is blind. Still, GM's list of bondholders is long enough so it could slow the pace at which a judge would...
...Much has been made of the fact that, as things are currently being planned by the Administration, the government will become the largest shareholder in GM and the UAW will be the largest shareholder in Chrysler. Why would taxpayers want to have a controlling interest in a large auto company along with the portfolio of investments that their elected officials have purchased for them at a number of big banks? The issue is a red herring. In the case of Chrysler and GM, federal money is going into the companies and has to be paid back if the restructuring...