Word: gm
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...First Things First Before planning for the future, however, Detroit still has to get through the present. GM has been on life support since Dec. 19, when the outgoing Bush Administration threw it a short-term loan and told the company that it had until March 31 to come up with a plan for its long-term survival. It did - but its strategy was premised on projections that car sales would begin to pick up this year after last year's dismal industry performance, in which sales sank 18%, to 13.2 million units. But the pickup hasn't happened...
...Even worse, in the eyes of Obama's task force, is that GM was immodest in its assumptions. For instance, GM had forecast a market-share loss of 0.3% per year until 2014. The task force noted that GM has been losing market share at a rate of 0.7% per year for the past 30 years - and GM was planning to drop brands and nameplates. The task force had no reason to think that GM could gain share, and its sales rate proved that point. Industry-wide, March auto sales were down 40% on a seasonally adjusted basis. GM...
...Even trickier for a Democratic Administration is telling hard truths to the union. On that score, Obama's toughness has gained him some street cred in business circles - even drawing faint praise from a Wall Street Journal editorial. The task force has made it clear that GM can't afford the renegotiated wage-and-benefits package the UAW agreed to in 2007. Even using GM's best-case scenario, the company projected a negative net cash flow of $14.5 billion over the next six years. Most of that deficit can be accounted for in retiree health and pension benefits - which...
...harder job facing the Administration comes when the 60-day window is up for restructuring GM outside of bankruptcy. The biggest challenge for GM remains fashioning a plan acceptable to the UAW, which represent GM's 62,000 workers, and its bondholders, mostly banks and other large institutions, which are owed some $27.5 billion and by law are first in line to get paid back. It's fairly clear the Administration wants to make bondholders eat huge losses - or make them try their luck in bankruptcy court. "No bankruptcy judge is going to rule against GM and its plan...
...Should GM go into bankruptcy, the plan would involve forming one company around bad assets, such as Hummer and Saturn, and dumping the retiree health-care liabilities into it. That company could be sold off or wound down. A second company would comprise the better performing Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac and GMC brands. That ongoing firm could be partly owned by the bondholders, the UAW and other creditors...