Saab rescue
January 27, 2010
Sweden's iconic car brand Saab has been rescued from the brink by Dutch auto group Spyker.
It looked bleak for Saab just a few weeks ago after its owners, General Motors, appointed a liquidator to begin to dissolve the company as part of massive restructuring plans.
GM took full control of Saab in 2000, but the global recession over the last two years caused the Detroit-based automotive giant to rethink its future radically.
In Europe, GM had planned to sell a controlling stake in its Opel brand, threatening thousands of jobs in Germany and Belgium. But after many months of consideration, GM did a U-turn and decided to retain it.
Saab is not part of Opel and was not integrated into GM's global operations, and GM had planned from the start to sell the company, which employs 3,400 workers in the town of Trollhattan in southwestern Sweden.
A deal with the exclusive Swedish car maker Koenigsegg fell through, and it looked like the end of the road for Saab, which had a reputation for safety and idiosyncratic design.
Unlikely couple
Another exclusive carmaker, the Dutch Spyker, which was liquidated itself in the 1920s only to be resurrected as a specialist sports car brand in 2000, made an offer, which has now been accepted.
The deal, which has been described by Spyker's CEO, Victor Muller, as extremely technical, involves Spyker paying GM $74 million (52 million euros) in cash followed by $326 million (232 million euros) in deferred shares for Saab.
Spyker and Saab are not an obvious couple. While Spyker employs about 100 people who built 43 cars last year, Saab has 3,400 workers and sold 93,000 cars in 2008.
The new group will become Saab Spyker Automobiles.
td/AP/AFP/Reuters
Editor: Michael Lawton