Saab’s Chinese Partners to Buy Auto Maker Outright
The takeover of Saab by the Chinese companies would provide the auto maker with the financial footing it needs to complete reorganization in Sweden, pay creditors and workers and restart its Trollhattan assembly plant.
Saab Automobile says today its Chinese joint-venture partners, Pang Da and Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile, will take over the struggling Swedish auto maker in a deal valued at E100 million ($141.4 million).
The buyout of Saab by the Chinese companies would provide the auto maker with the financial footing it needs to complete reorganization in Sweden, pay creditors and workers and restart its Trollhattan assembly plant, dark since April.
Saab, and parent company Swedish Automobile, had been working against a deadline later today to secure long-term funding for its future and remain in reorganization. The auto maker was facing the possibility its reorganization would be terminated and its business perhaps liquidated.
After Saab exits reorganization as a viable auto maker, its Chinese partners will help launch new models and expand into the Asian market.
“This will secure all the plans for the company,” Saab CEO Victor Muller says in an interview with a Swedish radio station posted on the auto maker’s website. “This is the best achievable result.”
Muller, a Dutch millionaire, bought Saab from General Motors in 2010 for $400 million and saved the Swedish auto maker from liquidation. However, as an independent company, Saab has been mired in a financial crisis and courting investment partners to stay alive.
The takeover remains subject to a final agreement and regulatory approval. The preliminary purchase agreement expires Nov. 15.
GM also must approve the deal. The Detroit auto maker holds preferred shares in Saab as part of the sale to Muller and it licenses technology to Saab.
GM also serves as a supplier to Saab, building a newly launched 9-4X cross/utility vehicle for the auto maker at one of its assembly plants in Mexico.
GM spokesman Jim Cain declines to elaborate on how the transaction might affect the auto maker.
“We haven’t seen, or been briefed, on the proposed transaction,” he tells WardsAuto. “Just like every other supplier, we’re waiting for more information.”
Muller will remain CEO of Saab until a replacement is found and continue to play a role in the auto maker in the future, he says in the radio interview.
Chinese auto maker Geeley bought Sweden’s only other auto maker, Volvo, from Ford in 2010.
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