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There's more to it than that, even. Here's what a LOT of people seem not to "get": SAAB has a number of commitments that it has made to lots of different folks, some of which extend many years into the future: It has loans it needs to pay back; it has owners to whom it owes warranty obligations; it has pensions it will need to pay; it likely has suppliers to whom it has made commitments to purchase minimum quantities for several years into the future; it likely has ongoing liability for licenses to intellectual property; and on and on. These obligations are currently ultimately owed by GM, and would be undertaken by whoever buys SAAB. But if the buyer, a year from now, or two years from now, goes under, then GM will once again become responsible for those liabilities. That is, while it can assign its liabilities to the buyer, it will remain responsible to guarantee them in the event the buyer defaults. So, it's obviously important to GM that whomever they sell to will have the wherewithal to stay in business long enough to run out the clock on these liabilities.
The nightmare scenario would be to sell everything to Spyker, and have Spyker fall apart in a year, and then have SAAB owners come back to GM with their warranty claims, and for GM have no way to fulfill those claims because, in the meantime, Spyker may have made such a mess of things that GM can no longer get parts from its suppliers, no longer has a dealership network to provide the service they promised to provide, etc.
So, as part of any deal, GM is going to want adequate assurance that the successor is going to be successful with the brand, at least for a while; it's not just about a purchase price.
I'm NOT in any way suggesting that GM is not a bunch of douchebags; they are. Nor do I mean to suggest that Spyker, in particular, would be unable to do well with the SAAB brand, and flourish; I'm using their name here only hypothetically. But a lot of folks seem to be under the impression that GM has no genuine, rational, reasonable business interest in being assured that their successor with the SAAB brand will be able to flourish, and that's just not the case.
posted by 208.74.177...
, Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:01:33, Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:46:40
, Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:14:46
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