Saab and two subsidiaries filed with the District Court in Vanersborg, Sweden, according to Saab’s parent company, Swedish Automobile. The parent company said it “does not expect to realize any value from its shares in Saab Automobile,” and that it “will write off its interest in Saab Automobile completely.”
Victor R. Muller, the Dutch entrepreneur who had previously been chief executive of the sports car maker, Spyker Cars, acquired Saab from G.M. in January 2010 for $74 million in cash and $326 million in preferred shares. But he was unable to obtain the financing he needed to modernize the Saab line-up and reinvigorate sales at a time of global financial turmoil.
The court said it had appointed two receivers who were responsible for either selling the company outright or breaking it up and selling it piecemeal. The proceeds would be used to repay Saab’s creditors.
In a last bid for survival, Saab had been trying in recent months to arrange an infusion of cash from Chinese investors, including Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile.
But “G.M. said over the weekend ‘whatever happens, come hell or high water, we won’t support a deal with Youngman,”’ Mr. Muller said.
“I honestly don’t know” why G.M. refused to budge, he added. “They wouldn’t tell me.”
He said there remained a glimmer of hope for Saab, as there were still “parties out there that have expressed an interest.” But the automaker’s fate, he said, now rested in the hands of its receivers.
Mr. Muller’s efforts to keep Saab afloat became increasingly desperate after suppliers stopped extending credit in the spring, forcing production to halt.
With salaries unpaid, unions at Saab began legal proceedings in September that could have led to liquidation of the company. Mr. Muller responded by voluntarily seeking court protection from creditors, gaining time to seek funds.
But General Motors, which retained an effective veto on any deal because it owned key patents used by Saab, refused to back the Chinese investment, fearing it would “negatively impact G.M.’s existing relationships in China.”
Swedish Automobile said that Youngman, having considered G.M.’s position, “informed Saab Automobile that the funding to continue and complete the reorganization of Saab Automobile could not be concluded.”
“The board of Saab Automobile subsequently decided that the company, without further funding, will be insolvent, and that filing bankruptcy is in the best interests of its creditors,” it said.
James R. Cain, a G.M. spokesman on financial communications in Detroit, described the bankruptcy filing Monday as “the end of a very long and difficult road” for Saab.
Mr. Cain disputed the idea that the U.S. company had been uncooperative, saying that G.M. had been “very clear and very consistent at the late stages, when the sale was proposed, because we felt it was in the best interest of everyone to understand what our concerns were, and we never wavered from that.”
Mr. Muller said “maybe three” companies remained interested in acquiring Saab, and that in some respects bankruptcy would make the company more attractive, as there were advantages to picking it up with a clean slate.
To make a go of it, he said, any buyer would have to obtain G.M.’s permission to make the Saab 93, 94 and 95 models. A buyer would also have to obtain permission from Saab AB, the now-unrelated aerospace company from which the automaker originated, to use the Saab brand.
In a statement, Stefan Lofven, head of the IF Metall union, called on the Swedish government to help the more than 3,000 Saab employees to find new jobs. He also urged Saab’s administrator to arrange a sale of the company quickly as a single unit.
Anette Hellgren, president of the Unionen white-collar local union in Trollhattan, said the carmaker’s employees remained in limbo because of the hope of another buyer emerging. “In this time, not knowing where to go, it’s very hard,” she said.
“I don’t think people blame Mr. Muller,” she said, noting that he was met with applause Monday when he went to address workers. “It was a pity that it didn’t work out. He made all his efforts to make it fly.”
Despite a famously loyal base of customers, Saab has reported a profit only once in the past two decades, and the fact that all of the global automakers have passed it over suggests a different fate ahead. Analysts expect the company, which began selling cars in 1949, to be broken up and sold in bits.
“There’s not much left to salvage,” Anders Trapp, an auto industry analyst at Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken in Stockholm, said, noting that Saab’s customer base had been dwindling as the problems grew. “Maybe the brand will continue in some form, but there’s not much left of it anymore.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 19, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of Saab’s chief executive as Viktor.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/business/global/saab-files-for-liquidation.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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