Opel Negotiations Could Take "Longer Than Expected"

Is somebody out there who still believes Opel will be sold soon? Because this sounds like a neverending story, as reports on the matter keep coming, revealing all kind of deadlines for the German manufacturer to find a new investor. This time, a member of the German's government Opel Task Force told Reuters that the sale could take longer than expected, partially because GM and Germany can't agree over the two bids for Opel.

"The process is just not far enough along from today's point of view," he said revealing that a decision is unlikely to be made at the upcoming meeting of the board on August 3.

As we told you in our previous posts on the matter, Germany favors Magna while General Motors says the takeover proposal submitted by RHJ is much more advantageous for Opel. In a blog post on GM Europe's webpage, John Smith GM group vice president and GM’s chief negotiator for the sale of Opel, explained why RHJ's bid is better than Magna's:

"The bid from RHJI is completed and would represent a much simpler structure and would be easier to implement. It would require less monetary participation by the government and would keep our global alignments solid, while still creating an independent Opel/Vauxhall organization in Germany. This remains a reasonable and viable option to be considered as the very difficult issues around the Magna negotiations continue to be worked."

Smith confirmed that Magna is currently backed by some politicians and the Labor Bench but revealed its bid "varied from the negotiations we had in the previous weeks and contained elements around intellectual property and our Russian operations that simply could not be implemented."