[Info-vax] HP Cuts Salaries

[JF Mezei]

johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk wrote:

> Britain has already seen both, and it's not a happy picture. It also
> sounds a lot like GM are about to disengage from Europe (Opel and
> Vauxhall in particuar, although Saab were already in the "for sale
> dirt cheap" section if I remember rightly).

Saab is under bankrupcy protection. A saviour will recapitalise Saab
along with editors, leaving GM with worthless shares of a corporate
structure that no longer exists because Sabb will be a new corporation.

But the sooner this happens, the sooner GM can remove any liabilities it
has related to Saab fro its own books.

German governmnet apparently struck a deal to help partially recaitalise
Opel and get concessions from creditors, but GM will remain a major
shareholder (albeit diluted).

> US, they've got plenty US-designed+built cars they can profitably
> export, right? Whaddya mean, they don't? How did that happen?

One needs to be fair for this: The US manufacturers used their european
operations to make efficient cars. Most/all of the small cars on sale
today in teh USA from Ford/GM are actually designs imported from their
european operations.  When Chrysler was owned by Daimler, Chrysler
refused to distribute Daimler's small car offerings (notably the Smart
car).  Chrysler is now without a european subsidiary, so any small car
it wants to sell with either have to be designed from scratch or
designed purhased from a foreign car maker.