With GM repositioning its IPO to target US retail investors, we find ourselves motivated to once again sound the alarm about one of the major drains facing The General’s taxpayer-provided cash pile: the restructuring of its European Opel division. Opel slated its Antwerp, elgium plant for closure earlier this year, but at the time GM was trying to find a buyer for the plant. In May we noted that automotive overcapacity on the continent made finding a buyer for Opel Antwerp a tall order, and sure enough, Bloomberg reports that a buyer has not been found. What Bloomberg leaves out of its write-up: GM is now stuck with the €400m ($530m+) bill to pay off all those unemployed workers. A half-billion here, a half-billion there… soon you’re talking about real money.
Given the state of the Opel business is it unreasonable to presume that provision had already been made for expenditures related to this? And that any non-US gov’t money, or a plant investor, would have been to the good?
Or was such fwd scenario and contingency planning outside the event horizon of the bankruptcy-planning crew?
In another sense, given the immenent demise of Antwerp, it seems we are watching a low-motion continuance of the bankruptcy and restructuring process, as the music doesn’t seem to have yet stopped playing…
(While, a bit to the North, the fat lady appears to be preparing to serenade SAAB.)
elgium?
true you cant spell it out without having to put the “m” in the Netherlands, and the French probably thought the “B” was Romanian and deported it.