GM: 3 bids received for Germany's Opel
FRANKFURT -- General Motors said Monday that it received three final offers from three companies for its Opel unit, but a winner has not been named.
GM would not identify from whom it received bids, but a person familiar with the bidding process said they were from RHJ International; a consortium of Canadian auto parts maker Magna International and Russian lender Sberbank; and China's Beijing Automotive Industry.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of a confidentiality agreement surrounding the process.
"The final bids will now be analyzed and compared by GM," the company said in a brief statement. "The final bids as well as GM's preliminary findings will then be reviewed with the German and other impacted governments, the EU Commission and the Opel/Vauxhall Trust Board."
A person familiar with Magna's proposal said the company would take a larger stake in Opel, from the original 20% it envisioned, to 27.5%.
Under the new plan, Magna and Sberbank, Magna's Russian partner, would own 55% of the company — 27.5% each — while the remaining 35% of the company would go to GM and 10% would go to Opel employees.
The 55% for the new partners is unchanged.
Earlier Monday, Arnaud Denis, an RHJ International spokesman in Brussels said he expected RHJ to submit a bid Monday, though wouldn't comment on the details of the proposal.
"Nothing is definitive. As long as negotiations are still going on, we're not commenting," Denis said.
On Friday, RHJ chief executive Leonhard Fischer was quoted as saying by the newspaper Bild that its plans for Opel would see it cut a maximum of some 10,000 jobs at Opel, which employs some 25,000 people in Germany, nearly half of GM Europe's work force.
Opel's future appeared clear at the end of May when, with the German government's support, a preliminary agreement was signed for the Magna-led consortium to move ahead with a rescue of the unit.
Since then, the situation has grown murkier, with RHJ saying last week that its own negotiations with GM were "at an advanced stage."
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