New Bids Offer Glimmer of Hope for Saab

Posted Dec 20th 2009 2:40PM by Trey Thoelcke
Filed under: Competitive Strategy, General Motors (GM)

The end has come for General Motors's Saab unit, with its 3,400 employees and 1,100 dealers. Or has it?

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports that Dutch auto maker Spyker Cars offered a new takeover proposal for Saab. Spyker said Sunday that it hopes the new plan will deal with the obstacles that caused talks to collapse Friday, after which GM announced that it would shutter its Swedish brand.

Spyker said its new offer is an 11-point proposal addressing each of the issues that arose during the due diligence process, and has the full backing of Saab management. The plan also eliminated the need for a €400 million loan from the European Investment Bank, which would have been guaranteed by the Swedish government but which wouldn't have been authorized after GM's Dec. 31 deadline to get a deal for Saab.

"We have made every effort to resolve the issues that were preventing the conclusion of this matter and we have asked GM and all other involved parties to seriously consider this offer," Spyker CEO Victor Muller said. He said he was "very confident" that the new offer would bring GM back to the table and lead to a sale.

GM said Sunday that it had received several new enquiries about Saab. GM didn't disclose who the other interested parties were and declined to comment further until it had evaluated all the offers.

Tags: General Motors, GM, inthenews, Saab, Spyker Cars, Victor Muller