"Germany says talks with GM on Opel are far from over," says the Friday morning Reuters
headline. Which means that discussions about the sale of the Adam Opel GmbH unit of General Motors Co., already months old, could continue for many more weeks, beyond the Sept. 27 German election that has loomed so large in the process.
Which raises in turn the question: What the heck are they talking about all this time?
We do have some inkling of where the Groundhog Day vibe is coming from.
Previous comments by GM chief negotiator John Smith, made on his blog, indicated that the German government's preferred bidder, Magna International Inc. (NYSE:MGA), had lengthened the process by presenting a bid that didn't reflect issues settled in earlier discussions. He's also complained about the complexity of the bid from Magna and its two Russian partners.
Some are now criticizing the German government for coming out too early for Magna. The logic there, presumably, is that the government backing encouraged Magna to overplay its hand against GM, failing to appreciate that the restructured automaker would hold a few cards of its own. But according to the Reuters report, Chancellor Angela Merkel deflected the charge in an interview with Handelsblatt, insisting that the government needed to say what it wanted in order to hold its ground in talks with GM.
Which, of course, are continuing to continue. There was no face-to-face meeting scheduled for Friday, Reuters reported, but Smith was scheduled to speak to government officials on the telephone. -
Kenneth Klee
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