Magna Better Than Fiat in Opel Takeover Battle

We already told out that Opel's fate is currently in the hands of two large companies, Magna International and Fiat. Magna has the money to purchase GM's German unit and even help it get out of the crisis without too many loses while Fiat has already formed a huge alliance with Chrysler and could include Opel in what may become the world's second largest automaker. But the question remains: who's the one to snatch Opel?

Opel Supervisory Board member Armin Schild told Reuters that Magna International forwarded a better proposal compared to Fiat's, pointing that the Austrian-Canadian joint venture is now favorite to buy the German unit.

"Magna wants a financial investment with other investors in a holding company," Schild said in an interview on Thursday.

Recent reports claimed Magna International is eyeing an Opel acquisition together with several other partners, including GAZ, Russia's second-largest automaker, plus a couple of other Russian investors such as Sberbank. But even so, Oleg Deripaska, owner of GAZ, repeatedly insisted he has no interest in buying Opel for the time being.

Meanwhile, Opel is still struggling to decide whether a takeover could boost the number of employees forced to leave the company. Schild says job cuts are almost inevitable in case one of the two investors buy Opel.

"The question is whether job cuts can take place without compulsory redundancies and plant closures," he said.

An earlier report said that Fiat might even cut around 18,000 jobs in case it manages to complete the Opel deal, in a timeframe between 2011 and 2016. Obviously, the Italian manufacturer denied the allegations in a manner we already know by now.