Bankruptcy

GM & Opel

By Stephen Lubben

On the day GM filed, the Times ran a story noting that GM's European division ? Opel/Vauxhall ? had been ?spared? going into bankruptcy by the deal with Magna and some Russian investors.

Are we so certain they were spared?  Sure in the short term European employees and others who rely on GM will avoid some pain, but what about the long term?  The domestic part of GM is talking about dropping over 2,000 dealers, rewriting its labor contracts, massively reducing its debt load and shuttering several plants, all in about a month.  Will Opel?s new owners be able to achieve a similar degree of restructuring in anything close to that timeframe?  It may be my American chauvinism, but my impression is that it will be even harder to obtain a comprehensive restructuring of Opel outside of a bankruptcy process, as the European jurisdictions have much stricter laws regarding the termination of employees, shuttering plants, etc.

As GM and its stakeholders are now learning, sometimes avoiding bankruptcy simply makes the pain worse when it comes.  GM's chapter 11 case would have been much simpler (relatively) two years ago, when the credit markets were open and people where still buying cars.

(I invite the European readers to comment or correct me in the comments or via email.)

Full post as published by Credit Slips on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).