GM Grants 650M Euros to Fund Opel

After announcing its new management team that is supposed to help save Opel, Nick Reilly also confirmed that General Motors will give the German brand 650 million Euros until the company manages to raise more funds from other sources. Opel and its British sister Vauxhall are looking to raise up to 3.3 billion Euros to finance the restructuring process, company officials announced in 2009.

"The payment accelerations serve as a temporary funding source for the (Opel) group's operations until more permanent financing can be arranged," GM said in a regulatory filing on Friday, according to a Reuters report.

As mentioned, Nick Reilly, Opel and Vauxhall CEO, announced on Friday the new management team that will try to help the German brand come back among the top players of the industry. Just as expected, several General Motors officials will get more involved in the Opel business, including Stephen Girsky, Senior Advisor to GM CEO Ed Whitacre, Michael P. Millikin, GM Vice President & General Counsel, Bill Parfitt, Chairman, GM United Kingdom and Karl-Friedrich Stracke, GM Vice President Global Engineering.

Mark James, until now CFO for GM Daewoo, has become Opel's CFO. Rita Forst, former Executive Director, Vehicle Systems & Integration in Rüsselsheim is the new responsible for Engineering while Hans Demant has been appointed GM Vice President, Global Intellectual Property Rights.

Up until now, there are no clear details on how exactly Reilly plans to restructure Opel. However, he did give us a glimpse into how Opel will try to deal with the global market, emphasizing that the German brand will continue to rely on new product launches, most of them featuring innovative technologies especially aimed at the current difficult economic conditions.