Do I smell a maneuver at Chryler Canada?

[OntarioVanMan]

Fiat chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne told the Canadian Auto Workers earlier this week that a brief bankruptcy filing in the U.S. would be likely, as a means to deal with some creditors opposing repayment conditions.

However, he also indicated Chrysler's Canadian subsidiary could avoid bankruptcy court protection here because its plants are in better shape financially.

The other night the CAW had a supper meeting with Marchionne that went as reported very well.....

I am seeing a possible closure of the US division and going forward and producing in Canada....since they are separate entities...

Added:
Sources familiar with the company's plans say Marchionne, who grew up in Toronto and graduated from the University of Windsor, wants to produce cars in North America

Marchionne suggested to CAW president Ken Lewenza at a dinner earlier this week that Canadian operations are safe because of their productivity and the significant union concessions that were made to keep them competitive.

 

[greg334]

Not likely, Chrysler of Canada is still a seperate company, like a division of Chrysler, even under benz they kept it separate because of the Canadian laws. GM and Ford have the same arrangements and this is why you see the Canadian company stronger than the american version, they have to keep seperate books and seperate operating funds.

You know the best thing for Chrysler right now is to spin off Jeep and let them back on their own. They can do this easily and without job loses.

A lot of people (UAW) are now questioning the wisedom of these forced moves by Obama (seeing that 23,000 of them will be gone soon), a lot know that the problems have not been just with the mis-management of the companies, the infriltration of the foreign companines into market share but now seem to think that GM and Chrysler have no real products to sell. Some have even questioned why the UAW is getting a stake in all of this when there are massive job loses.

Speaking of GM, GM is making three big mistakes, selling off Opel, dumping Saturn and thinking that bring out the Camaro is going to save them. Opel is doing good and they should leverage that here, Saturn has a large following of faithful buyers who have stuck with that product for a long time and the Camaro is a waste of money at this point.

 

[OntarioVanMan]

I question the logic of putting the GM Volt which they claimed was the future they stopped construction in MI and halted production...?

The Camero should join the ranks of "Special Editions" maybe..people love nostalgia.

 

[greg334]

Well see OVM, many don't understand GM and their way of doing things and this is where people think it is easy that they can change strategies in mid-stream.

Their management style is one of a bulky upper end decision making system that is akin to micromanaging of the most insignificant issues. Ford until the mid-40s had no management system in place, in fact there wasn't even an Org chart of the company but they had to change and used GM as one of the models. So If GM wanted to drop the Camaro, it more or less is a board decision (CEO, CFO and so on) not just the CEO saying we have to cut here and there.

Tying this with their need to look four years ahead on product planning with end of product life built into every product, it is no surprise that the Volt hasn't gotten off the ground sooner and no surprise at the hype they created over nothing. If we took the money they spent on just just the hyping of the product, we could have been making and selling the cars for the last year.

 

[chefdennis]

Chysler has offically filed the BK paperwork with the courts and and will stop American production as of midnight tonight according to the radio. Now what that will do to the canadian units, I have no idea, they maybe seperate units, but i'd think they are still under Cerberus control, which would mean that the BK judge would have a say in what happens as he will with the other "profitable units' in the US.

The BK should have been left to happen to begun with and we wouldn't have all of these millions or billions in taxpayer m oney involved already, but.......and as long as the barry and turbo tim are calling the shots , who knows how this will all shake out. There is already talk that over 15 of the investers are thinking of filing lawsuits to block the Union getting perferred treatment in the BK courts......right now it is all backwards, normally te bondholders are taken care of 1st, the pensions should be dumped into the "fake gov funded program" and they get what they get, and the union certainly wouldn't be getting 55% of the company stock.........

It will be interesting to watch "government/ uaw motors" take shape...

 

[greg334]

I heard all the crying here in the former motor city and kind of getting tired of it. Like one caller said to the local idiot talk show, no one was too concern when the textile industry and the other industries were decimated by the same thing, so what makes the auto industry so special that they need such overreaching intervention?

Weren't there more textile workers in this country than auto workers when they went away?

The thing is Chrysler will have to close plants, cut the work force and that means that I and you will have to pay the benefits of the people who worked there because they will be treated as they are more important than us who were not union in our careers. I wouldn't complain but it is the same thing over and over here in Michigan, feel sorry for the hard working people putting fenders on the cars while some of us are sitting back enjoying our 60 hour work week in hell while trying to make ends meet.

I was reading the latest AP story and this little bit popped up; "In cutting the deal, Obama buys himself good will with an important labor force, especially in a state, Michigan, suffering hugely from unemployment. At the same time he gets to push a key policy goal, fuel-efficiency, not just as president but as a powerful company investor."

Yea right, don't these idiots really get that they are out of a job because of his messing around? The unemployed in this state are not made up of a majority of union workers but people in other industries, like Life Science.

I don't want my tax money to go to these guys, period. No industry deserves a loan like this with all these strings attached. What happened to our congressional support, it must have been one of these things where Levin and Stabanow were giving up the auto companies to get something else. The sad thing is the union worker of this state will vote for them again even thought they were the cuase of the compaines demise.

I don't want to see the union own a dime of stock in the car company, the workers are not investors, they are workers. This screws a lot of people who believed in the company and now hold nothig but worthless paper.

But the sad thing is that the UAW people who voted for Obama don't get that he is setting them all up to fail and if they lost their job, it wasn't Toyota or Honda or Kia that caused it but Obama. Knowing the greed of the union itself, it will be surprising that it survives two years. At 55% ownership that is being claimed, I would think that they would demand more and screw the consumer confidence right into the ground in no time.

Oh well won't buy a vehicle from a company owned by a union and no one should.

 

[chefdennis]

I have read a few articles on this deal today, and the 1 thing that i haven't seen or heard about is the position of Cerberus it looks like they might be the kid that walked off with the cookies and left the jar....they got the 4 billion bucks, I haven't read a thing about that being paid back in any of the reports.....so do they just turn over all of their investment and holdings and walk away?? Makes one wonder.....and now the gov is ready to dump another 8 billion bucks into the new venture.....yeap, barry doesn't want to own the american car comaonies, he just wants them "beholden" to him.............