GM has repaid Opel loans
Nov 24, 2009
BERLIN - GENERAL Motors has repaid the 1.5 billion euros (S$3.1 billion) in bridging loans it received from Germany to keep its troubled European unit Opel afloat, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday.
'I can tell you that the last funds (received by) General Motors have been paid back, which means that the Opel operation has not cost the German taxpayer a cent,' she said in a speech in Berlin.
She added that she expected 'a comprehensive thank-you letter from General Motors in a few years.' And she defended her decision to offer the huge loan to the US firm, saying: 'It was absolutely right ... to build a bridge.'
GM agreed in September to sell a majority stake in Opel, which includes Vauxhall in Britain, to Canadian auto parts maker Magna and Russian state-owned lender Sberbank.
But it has since decided that it wants to keep the loss-making unit and restructure itself, with the loss of around 10,000 jobs across Europe. It has not yet said where the jobs will be cut and which plants will be closed.
The news infuriated Germany and Mrs Merkel, who had invested a lot of political capital in the deal with Magna-Sberbank. -- AFP
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