GM to Sign Opel Sale Next Week

Negotiations on the future of Opel are going well and General Motors might sign the contract to sell 55 percent of the German brand to Magna and Sberbank next week. In case the US-based carmaker gives its final approval next week, the deal might close as soon as November, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

"The signing is planned soon," one of the sources said on Wednesday, Reuters informed today.

Furthermore, it might appear that talks with union leaders are also making progress. The Canadian - Austrian partsmaker Magna International plans to cut 10,500 jobs in Europe, according to some leaked documents that surfaced last week. Germany would be the most affected, if we trust the leaked documents, with 4,116 fired employees. Belgium takes the second place with 2,517 fired employees, followed by Spain with 2,090 and the UK with 1,373.

Germany has already agreed to provide 4.5 billion euros for Opel, in a move supposed to help the new owners preserve jobs in the country. But several countries that are hosting Opel factories have already expressed their concerns regarding the deal, claiming that such an agreement could favor Germany, detrimental to other countries.

“We do not believe the case has been demonstrated that the current Magna proposal is commercially the most viable plan,” Business secretary Peter Mandelson wrote in a letter submitted last week to the European Commission. “Capacity at highly efficient plants in Britain and Spain is planned to be under-utilized, in favor of higher utilization of some of GM's other less-efficient plants.”