Saab's parent company Swedish Automobile N.V. [Swan] said on Friday that it has agreed to sell the company to China's Pang Da and Youngman.
If the deal goes through, the Chinese will own Sweden’s car industry bar Koenigsegg as Volvo was sold to Geely in 2009 – admittedly at the much higher price of US$2 billion dollars than the €100 million (US$141.7 million) Pang Da and Youngman are willing to pay for acquiring 100% of Saab Automobile and Saab GB shares.
After the last turn of events and with the court appointed administrator pushing for the carmaker to be declared bankrupt, Saab’s CEO, Victor Muller, was left with no options but to renege on his earlier decision to terminate the July deal and accept last week’s offer to sell the carmaker.
At this point, the two parties have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which is valid until November 15, as long as the restructuring process continues. The final deal, which stipulates that the sum will be paid in installments, is subject to receiving approval from Chinese authorities and other Saab shareholders.
After the agreement, the court-appointed administrator, Guy Lofalk, withdrew his proposal that the reorganization process and Saab’s court-ordered protection from creditors be terminated.
For the sake of Saab and its employees, we hope that this is the final epidose in the long and turbulent ride that has brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy more times that we can remember.
If you scroll down, you can hear what Victor Muller told Sveriges Radio after the deal was announced.
5 Comments:
Chinese Take Away...?
What a bullshit, they sold SAAB's soul to the devil, don't think the cars will continue to be built in Sweden and I don't want any "chinese" Saab, good-buy quality and hello to cheap rag. SAAB just finally died today...
Wahoo! SAAB IS SAVED!!
Just worried what the next SAAB story will be... 'Swedish Government doesn't agree to terms'... 'Lawyers unhappy with deal'... 'Production line is rusted due to lack of use'
Fingers crossed it is all ok this time for SAAB.
They were funky China men from funky Chinatown
They were chopping them up and they were chopping them down
It's an ancient Chinese art and everybody knew their part
From a feint into a slip, and kicking from the hip
Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
But they fought with expert timing
There was funky Billy Chin and little Saaby Chung
He said here comes the big boss, lets get it on
We took a bow and made a stand, started swinging with the hand
The sudden motion made me skip now we're into a brand knew trip
It doesn't matter where the money comes from, only what they do with the company. Geely (Chinese) owns Volvo. Saab needs to refine the new 9-5 and desperately needs to come up with a new 9-3. And as a smaller iffy company it needs to improve reliability from not too good to the best, ASAP. It is hard to see how a lower volume company unrelated to a larger company can survive. There's just too much engineering in any car model to not share platforms etc. Not that GM did so well with Saab. The fact that there is no new 9-3 years after it should have come out shows how much GM mismanaged and underinvested in Saab.
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