Obbligazioni societarie GM, Ford, Chrysler: il 3D dell'automotive USA (1 Viewer)
- Creatore Discussione Imark
- Data di Inizio
paologorgo
Chapter 11
paologorgo
Chapter 11
GM’s boldholders twist in the wind while Ford’s (F) debt retirement efforts are going very well.
Ford says its recent offer to purchase up to $1.1 billion of its senior secured debt for no more than 47% of par value is oversubscribed, and that the company is doubling the purchasing program. Also, the company announced that as of the early tender deadline, $3.4 billion (par) of its unsecured notes had been tendered in response to a separate purchase offer, putting subscription at 78-88% of the announced ceiling with two weeks remaining in the offer period.
If the company’s coincidental efforts to convince (pay off) holders of its convertible debt to convert common stock is also successful, Ford will reduce its debt from nearly $26 billion to less than $15 billion, and will reduce its annual servicing costs by more than $200 million. Outstanding common shares would increase from 2.33 billion to as much as 2.86 billion.
DROOM or Doom?
The incentives for Ford to aggressively reduce debt by using up cash on the balance sheet would normally be offset by the chances such cash would be needed to fund operations until conditions improve. Many businesses, large and small, have failed because managers didn’t follow a simple axiom: DROOM. Don’t run out of money. However, in Ford’s case, DROOM doesn’t now exist. Ford can reduce its cash cushion to otherwise imprudent levels because the federal government is expected to provide new debt if needed. However, if the company’s prospects improve from here, Ford’s debt retirement at less than 50% of par looks like sheer genius.
Trust Preferred Still Preferred
At the same time the company announced these debt reduction programs, it announced deferment of payments to its cumulative convertible trust preferred shares (F-PS), which I wrote about here. F-PS, which is convertible into 2.8249 common shares, has since traded in near-lockstep with the common. Based on current prices (F-PS=8.33, F=2.90), the preferred is very preferable to the common, as it:
Last time I pointed out that because the common and preferred were trading so closely to the conversation rate, shorting the common while buying the preferred was interesting. A commenter noted that the Ford shares are expensive to borrow, as bondholders who had agreed to a debt-common conversion had soaked up available shares to lock in the cash value of their transactions. As these transactions are closed, and Ford common becomes more readily short-able, it will be interesting to see if the price ratio remains so close to the conversion ratio.
While F-PS continues to look good as Ford continues to improve its chances of being a survivor (perhaps the survivor), the arbitrage play's elimination of bankruptcy risk may very well be the smarter way forward.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/127583-ford-s-debt-reduction-plans-are-working?source=yahoo
Ford says its recent offer to purchase up to $1.1 billion of its senior secured debt for no more than 47% of par value is oversubscribed, and that the company is doubling the purchasing program. Also, the company announced that as of the early tender deadline, $3.4 billion (par) of its unsecured notes had been tendered in response to a separate purchase offer, putting subscription at 78-88% of the announced ceiling with two weeks remaining in the offer period.
If the company’s coincidental efforts to convince (pay off) holders of its convertible debt to convert common stock is also successful, Ford will reduce its debt from nearly $26 billion to less than $15 billion, and will reduce its annual servicing costs by more than $200 million. Outstanding common shares would increase from 2.33 billion to as much as 2.86 billion.
DROOM or Doom?
The incentives for Ford to aggressively reduce debt by using up cash on the balance sheet would normally be offset by the chances such cash would be needed to fund operations until conditions improve. Many businesses, large and small, have failed because managers didn’t follow a simple axiom: DROOM. Don’t run out of money. However, in Ford’s case, DROOM doesn’t now exist. Ford can reduce its cash cushion to otherwise imprudent levels because the federal government is expected to provide new debt if needed. However, if the company’s prospects improve from here, Ford’s debt retirement at less than 50% of par looks like sheer genius.
Trust Preferred Still Preferred
At the same time the company announced these debt reduction programs, it announced deferment of payments to its cumulative convertible trust preferred shares (F-PS), which I wrote about here. F-PS, which is convertible into 2.8249 common shares, has since traded in near-lockstep with the common. Based on current prices (F-PS=8.33, F=2.90), the preferred is very preferable to the common, as it:
- Will be paid dividends of 26.5% if the company survives;
- Is convertible to common stock and so will share any common stock price appreciation; and
- Is higher in the capital structure, though this likely doesn’t matter.
Last time I pointed out that because the common and preferred were trading so closely to the conversation rate, shorting the common while buying the preferred was interesting. A commenter noted that the Ford shares are expensive to borrow, as bondholders who had agreed to a debt-common conversion had soaked up available shares to lock in the cash value of their transactions. As these transactions are closed, and Ford common becomes more readily short-able, it will be interesting to see if the price ratio remains so close to the conversion ratio.
While F-PS continues to look good as Ford continues to improve its chances of being a survivor (perhaps the survivor), the arbitrage play's elimination of bankruptcy risk may very well be the smarter way forward.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/127583-ford-s-debt-reduction-plans-are-working?source=yahoo
paologorgo
Chapter 11
io lo posto qui, poi magari lo spostiamo... 
Geithner's bid for the authority to force a restructuring at failing conglomerates, an override of well-understood bankruptcy law, is securing broad approval in Congress - but may prove worrying to creditors and could impact their willingness to lend.
S.A.
Geithner's bid for the authority to force a restructuring at failing conglomerates, an override of well-understood bankruptcy law, is securing broad approval in Congress - but may prove worrying to creditors and could impact their willingness to lend.
S.A.
paologorgo
Chapter 11
President Barack Obama last month handed his auto-industry team a seemingly impossible task: to engineer the most complicated industrial restructuring ever attempted by the federal government, and to do it fast.
With almost no experience in the car business, the team's dozen core members have undergone a crash course in the myriad woes plaguing the U.S. auto industry. Within days, just over a month after setting to work, they'll begin announcing decisions.
Interviews with task-force members indicate that the administration doesn't want to let General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC slip into bankruptcy protection, a course advocated by some critics of the industry. Instead, the task force is expected to say that it sees viable futures for both GM and Chrysler, but only if there are sacrifices from their managements, unions and GM's bondholders. The team will also lay out a firm timeline for action.
The government is prepared to lend the companies more money. The two companies have requested $22 billion more -- including $9 billion for the second quarter. But the task force may not disburse new aid immediately, choosing instead to preserve that as leverage.
Hanging in the balance are the jobs of 140,000 GM and Chrysler employees, more than 10,000 dealerships across the country, and a large swath of the industrial base in the Midwest.
On Wednesday, the task force met with officials from Chrysler and Italy's Fiat SpA and indicated it is still interested in seeing the two companies form an alliance, as the companies have proposed, according to two people who attended the meeting.
It's clear the team is not yet ready to put forward a comprehensive fix. "It's a steep learning curve that they've been climbing, and there is still a lot to do," said Michigan Rep. Gary Peters, whose district in suburban Detroit houses hundreds of auto suppliers, a few days after meeting with the task force. "That's why I suspect they'll come out with some preliminary statements, and then get back to work."
In session after session in a warren of offices at the Treasury Department, the team has sat through tutorials on dealer financing, studied basic data and debated the future of U.S. car sales. They have spent days trying to understand the complexities of the hundreds of companies that supply the car companies with axles, seats and other parts.
Steven Rattner, a former journalist-turned-investment banker, was picked last month to head the team. He reports to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the chief White House economic adviser. Mr. Rattner compares the challenge to a complicated puzzle.
'Rubik's Cube'
"It's like a Rubik's cube, trying to untwist it and trying to get all the colors to line up," he said in an interview. "So we've learned a lot about how car dealers work, and how companies get paid when they sell a car to a dealer, and why there are a certain number of dealers more than are optimal. Have we learned everything? Of course not, but I think we are learning what we need to learn to do this job."
The team's industrial expertise comes from Ron Bloom, a scrappy Harvard Business School graduate who gave up investment banking in 1996 to work as a top adviser to the United Steelworkers union. When Mr. Bloom's aging 1997 Ford Taurus conked out a few weeks ago, he traded it for a green Mustang with 50,000 miles on the clock.
Several team members, such as Brian Deese, a 31-year-old former Obama campaign aide, are on loan from the White House's National Economic Council. Three others specialize in climate change. The rest come from agencies such as the Energy and Labor departments. Backing them up are about 30 accountants and advisers.
Mr. Rattner dismisses the idea that his team may not have enough auto expertise to tackle the job. "We are not trying to run car companies," he says. He compares the work to what he and others have done in the private sector. "This is the type of investment decision that many of us on this team are used to making."
Before the team got started, the federal government already had sunk $17.4 billion in loans into GM and Chrysler. (Ford Motor Co. said it didn't need government assistance.) The two car makers received emergency cash in December on the condition they put forward plans by mid-February proving their long-term viability. When that deadline rolled around, the auto makers asked for up to $22 billion in loans and promised major changes.
Chrysler's plan included two options: remaining a standalone company, and striking the alliance with Fiat. GM's blueprint called for 47,000 job cuts, the elimination of brands such as Saturn, and the sale of stakes in international operations.
The team didn't get fully up and running until the last week of February, nearly a week after the companies submitted their plans. Among its first tutors was Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Center for Automotive Research. "They called on a Sunday and wanted us [in Washington] the next day," Mr. McAlinden says.
His verdict was gloomy. Americans this year will buy around 10 million new vehicles, he predicted, down from 13 million last year. And the market would never again top the 16 million units it last hit in 2007. "They just soaked it up," says Mr. McAlinden.
Dismal Take
The team got another dismal take from Deutsche Bank's auto analyst, Rod Lache, who made a splash in November when he set a target price of zero for GM's stock. His advice was to ignore the data. He recalls telling them: "This is a policy decision, not an economic one. One way or another, GM will have to be saved."
A few days later, Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, Mich., and 10 other city officials from around the country packed into a Treasury conference room with Messrs. Bloom and Deese. The son of a retired GM line worker, Mr. Bernero gave a heated defense of the importance of the auto industry. "We need to make saving the industry a national initiative like the Apollo project," he told the team. Mr. Bloom, jotting notes, reminded the mayors that he'd spent time both on Wall Street and among the unions.
The team met the next day with executives from Fiat and an adviser who was working on the Italian auto maker's proposed alliance with Chrysler. Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne led the team through a 75-page presentation, then served as a "color commentator" as others discussed portions of the document, a person who was at the meeting says.
Mr. Bloom focused on minute aspects of the business strategy, and Mr. Rattner, on how the deal would be structured. People on the Fiat team came away thinking that the task force's questions betrayed a limited understanding of the industry. "It's fair to say we walked out of the meeting and were a little unsettled," says one member of the Fiat team.
In the wake of that meeting, the executives and advisers working on the alliance were bombarded with questions from the task force. In the latest meeting about the alliance on Wednesday, the task force indicated that the two companies may need to make adjustments to the deal in order to make it more acceptable to the U.S. government, according to the two people who attended the meeting.
Late last year, Chrysler and GM had discussed the possibility of themselves merging. Those talks have been suspended. The task force has discussed the prospect of forcing the two companies back to the table if they cannot be stabilized, although that seems unlikely at the moment, according to several people involved in the talks.
The task force met with a committee representing GM's bondholders on the same day it met with Fiat executives. GM's bondholders hold about $27 billion in unsecured GM debt, and consequently will play a critical role in efforts to save the company. In June, GM will owe the bondholders $1 billion on convertible debt coming due.
Debt for Equity
The bondholders' attorneys laid out the details of a plan to exchange debt for equity, which would reduce pressure on GM to repay the bondholders. As the lawyers walked through a litany of potential challenges, Messrs. Rattner and Bloom took notes, offering minimal commentary, according to people who attended the meeting. Since then, the bondholders committee has had little contact with the task force. Its lawyers say they were surprised two weeks later when Mr. Rattner publicly criticized them for not being flexible enough.
Mr. Rattner and the Treasury Department haven't responded to requests for comment on the complaints by bondholders. On Sunday, a committee representing bondholders sent a letter to the Treasury Secretary Geithner that said they are "disappointed" that they haven't received a response to their proposal. They reminded Mr. Geithner that "the result of a failed [debt-for-equity] exchange would likely be a bankruptcy that would have dire consequences for the company."
The letter claimed that bondholders "have been asked to make deeper cuts than other stakeholders." But in a series of meetings with the task force, Michigan lawmakers have complained that bond investors aren't willing to make sacrifices as deep as those offered by the United Auto Workers.
Several auto experts who've met with the panel say they've been struck by the group's focus on trying to determine exactly when car sales will rebound. "They are absolutely concerned with the short-term, so it's hard to see them grasping the medium or longer-term issues," says Daniel Roos, an automotive expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who briefed the team in Washington on March 6.
Toyota's Jim Lentz, who directs sales for North America, says he was grilled by Messrs. Rattner and Bloom on his predictions. "They were very intent on understanding what was causing this huge drop in car sales, and how long it would last," he recalls.
Mr. Rattner says the focus on basic market forces makes sense. "The biggest variable" the team has had to wrestle with, he says, is "what the demand for cars will be in five years." If his team knew the answer to that, "a lot of this would get easier."
John McEleney owns two Chevy dealerships in Iowa and is chairman of the National Automotive Dealers Association. He flew into Washington March 6 with four other dealers, he says, to instruct the team "on how the dealer model works between the dealers and the car companies."
Mr. Bloom asked the dealers what they saw as the core cause of plunging car sales: low consumer confidence or tight credit? Mr. McEleney said they were equally to blame. Toyota's Mr. Lentz told the panel that plunging consumer sentiment was the primary culprit.
Union Meeting
On March 9, four members of the team -- Messrs. Rattner, Bloom, Deese, and White House economic adviser Diana Farrell -- flew to Detroit. Their first stop was the United Auto Workers' headquarters. They met over coffee for two hours in a conference room, union officials say. The three men from Washington wore suits and ties. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and his three main vice presidents wore oxford shirts embroidered with a UAW crest.
Mr. Gettelfinger and other officials shared specifics about how many retirees GM has in each state, in an effort to paint the problem as a national one, not just a Michigan one. Florida, California, New York and Indiana all have tens of thousands, they said. Alabama, the home state of Sen. Richard Shelby, has less than 50, Mr. Gettelfinger noted. Sen. Shelby has repeatedly pointed to union contracts as a key problem for car makers, and has urged the federal government to lead the Big Three into bankruptcy filings.
The foursome toured a 71-year-old plant where pickup trucks are built. Later, some UAW officials joked about the visitors wearing suits to tour auto plants, a breach of Detroit protocol.
At the Chrysler Dodge truck assembly plant, located in nearby Warren, Mr. Rattner says, the importance of the task force's work hit home. "At the end of all the numbers we are generating," he says, "there are real people."
Write to Neil King Jr. at [email protected] and John D. Stoll at [email protected]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123801450038141147.html
With almost no experience in the car business, the team's dozen core members have undergone a crash course in the myriad woes plaguing the U.S. auto industry. Within days, just over a month after setting to work, they'll begin announcing decisions.
Interviews with task-force members indicate that the administration doesn't want to let General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC slip into bankruptcy protection, a course advocated by some critics of the industry. Instead, the task force is expected to say that it sees viable futures for both GM and Chrysler, but only if there are sacrifices from their managements, unions and GM's bondholders. The team will also lay out a firm timeline for action.
The government is prepared to lend the companies more money. The two companies have requested $22 billion more -- including $9 billion for the second quarter. But the task force may not disburse new aid immediately, choosing instead to preserve that as leverage.
Hanging in the balance are the jobs of 140,000 GM and Chrysler employees, more than 10,000 dealerships across the country, and a large swath of the industrial base in the Midwest.
On Wednesday, the task force met with officials from Chrysler and Italy's Fiat SpA and indicated it is still interested in seeing the two companies form an alliance, as the companies have proposed, according to two people who attended the meeting.
It's clear the team is not yet ready to put forward a comprehensive fix. "It's a steep learning curve that they've been climbing, and there is still a lot to do," said Michigan Rep. Gary Peters, whose district in suburban Detroit houses hundreds of auto suppliers, a few days after meeting with the task force. "That's why I suspect they'll come out with some preliminary statements, and then get back to work."
In session after session in a warren of offices at the Treasury Department, the team has sat through tutorials on dealer financing, studied basic data and debated the future of U.S. car sales. They have spent days trying to understand the complexities of the hundreds of companies that supply the car companies with axles, seats and other parts.
Steven Rattner, a former journalist-turned-investment banker, was picked last month to head the team. He reports to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the chief White House economic adviser. Mr. Rattner compares the challenge to a complicated puzzle.
'Rubik's Cube'
"It's like a Rubik's cube, trying to untwist it and trying to get all the colors to line up," he said in an interview. "So we've learned a lot about how car dealers work, and how companies get paid when they sell a car to a dealer, and why there are a certain number of dealers more than are optimal. Have we learned everything? Of course not, but I think we are learning what we need to learn to do this job."
The team's industrial expertise comes from Ron Bloom, a scrappy Harvard Business School graduate who gave up investment banking in 1996 to work as a top adviser to the United Steelworkers union. When Mr. Bloom's aging 1997 Ford Taurus conked out a few weeks ago, he traded it for a green Mustang with 50,000 miles on the clock.
Several team members, such as Brian Deese, a 31-year-old former Obama campaign aide, are on loan from the White House's National Economic Council. Three others specialize in climate change. The rest come from agencies such as the Energy and Labor departments. Backing them up are about 30 accountants and advisers.
Mr. Rattner dismisses the idea that his team may not have enough auto expertise to tackle the job. "We are not trying to run car companies," he says. He compares the work to what he and others have done in the private sector. "This is the type of investment decision that many of us on this team are used to making."
Before the team got started, the federal government already had sunk $17.4 billion in loans into GM and Chrysler. (Ford Motor Co. said it didn't need government assistance.) The two car makers received emergency cash in December on the condition they put forward plans by mid-February proving their long-term viability. When that deadline rolled around, the auto makers asked for up to $22 billion in loans and promised major changes.
Chrysler's plan included two options: remaining a standalone company, and striking the alliance with Fiat. GM's blueprint called for 47,000 job cuts, the elimination of brands such as Saturn, and the sale of stakes in international operations.
The team didn't get fully up and running until the last week of February, nearly a week after the companies submitted their plans. Among its first tutors was Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Center for Automotive Research. "They called on a Sunday and wanted us [in Washington] the next day," Mr. McAlinden says.
His verdict was gloomy. Americans this year will buy around 10 million new vehicles, he predicted, down from 13 million last year. And the market would never again top the 16 million units it last hit in 2007. "They just soaked it up," says Mr. McAlinden.
Dismal Take
The team got another dismal take from Deutsche Bank's auto analyst, Rod Lache, who made a splash in November when he set a target price of zero for GM's stock. His advice was to ignore the data. He recalls telling them: "This is a policy decision, not an economic one. One way or another, GM will have to be saved."
A few days later, Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, Mich., and 10 other city officials from around the country packed into a Treasury conference room with Messrs. Bloom and Deese. The son of a retired GM line worker, Mr. Bernero gave a heated defense of the importance of the auto industry. "We need to make saving the industry a national initiative like the Apollo project," he told the team. Mr. Bloom, jotting notes, reminded the mayors that he'd spent time both on Wall Street and among the unions.
The team met the next day with executives from Fiat and an adviser who was working on the Italian auto maker's proposed alliance with Chrysler. Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne led the team through a 75-page presentation, then served as a "color commentator" as others discussed portions of the document, a person who was at the meeting says.
Mr. Bloom focused on minute aspects of the business strategy, and Mr. Rattner, on how the deal would be structured. People on the Fiat team came away thinking that the task force's questions betrayed a limited understanding of the industry. "It's fair to say we walked out of the meeting and were a little unsettled," says one member of the Fiat team.
In the wake of that meeting, the executives and advisers working on the alliance were bombarded with questions from the task force. In the latest meeting about the alliance on Wednesday, the task force indicated that the two companies may need to make adjustments to the deal in order to make it more acceptable to the U.S. government, according to the two people who attended the meeting.
Late last year, Chrysler and GM had discussed the possibility of themselves merging. Those talks have been suspended. The task force has discussed the prospect of forcing the two companies back to the table if they cannot be stabilized, although that seems unlikely at the moment, according to several people involved in the talks.
The task force met with a committee representing GM's bondholders on the same day it met with Fiat executives. GM's bondholders hold about $27 billion in unsecured GM debt, and consequently will play a critical role in efforts to save the company. In June, GM will owe the bondholders $1 billion on convertible debt coming due.
Debt for Equity
The bondholders' attorneys laid out the details of a plan to exchange debt for equity, which would reduce pressure on GM to repay the bondholders. As the lawyers walked through a litany of potential challenges, Messrs. Rattner and Bloom took notes, offering minimal commentary, according to people who attended the meeting. Since then, the bondholders committee has had little contact with the task force. Its lawyers say they were surprised two weeks later when Mr. Rattner publicly criticized them for not being flexible enough.
Mr. Rattner and the Treasury Department haven't responded to requests for comment on the complaints by bondholders. On Sunday, a committee representing bondholders sent a letter to the Treasury Secretary Geithner that said they are "disappointed" that they haven't received a response to their proposal. They reminded Mr. Geithner that "the result of a failed [debt-for-equity] exchange would likely be a bankruptcy that would have dire consequences for the company."
The letter claimed that bondholders "have been asked to make deeper cuts than other stakeholders." But in a series of meetings with the task force, Michigan lawmakers have complained that bond investors aren't willing to make sacrifices as deep as those offered by the United Auto Workers.
Several auto experts who've met with the panel say they've been struck by the group's focus on trying to determine exactly when car sales will rebound. "They are absolutely concerned with the short-term, so it's hard to see them grasping the medium or longer-term issues," says Daniel Roos, an automotive expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who briefed the team in Washington on March 6.
Toyota's Jim Lentz, who directs sales for North America, says he was grilled by Messrs. Rattner and Bloom on his predictions. "They were very intent on understanding what was causing this huge drop in car sales, and how long it would last," he recalls.
Mr. Rattner says the focus on basic market forces makes sense. "The biggest variable" the team has had to wrestle with, he says, is "what the demand for cars will be in five years." If his team knew the answer to that, "a lot of this would get easier."
John McEleney owns two Chevy dealerships in Iowa and is chairman of the National Automotive Dealers Association. He flew into Washington March 6 with four other dealers, he says, to instruct the team "on how the dealer model works between the dealers and the car companies."
Mr. Bloom asked the dealers what they saw as the core cause of plunging car sales: low consumer confidence or tight credit? Mr. McEleney said they were equally to blame. Toyota's Mr. Lentz told the panel that plunging consumer sentiment was the primary culprit.
Union Meeting
On March 9, four members of the team -- Messrs. Rattner, Bloom, Deese, and White House economic adviser Diana Farrell -- flew to Detroit. Their first stop was the United Auto Workers' headquarters. They met over coffee for two hours in a conference room, union officials say. The three men from Washington wore suits and ties. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and his three main vice presidents wore oxford shirts embroidered with a UAW crest.
Mr. Gettelfinger and other officials shared specifics about how many retirees GM has in each state, in an effort to paint the problem as a national one, not just a Michigan one. Florida, California, New York and Indiana all have tens of thousands, they said. Alabama, the home state of Sen. Richard Shelby, has less than 50, Mr. Gettelfinger noted. Sen. Shelby has repeatedly pointed to union contracts as a key problem for car makers, and has urged the federal government to lead the Big Three into bankruptcy filings.
The foursome toured a 71-year-old plant where pickup trucks are built. Later, some UAW officials joked about the visitors wearing suits to tour auto plants, a breach of Detroit protocol.
At the Chrysler Dodge truck assembly plant, located in nearby Warren, Mr. Rattner says, the importance of the task force's work hit home. "At the end of all the numbers we are generating," he says, "there are real people."
Write to Neil King Jr. at [email protected] and John D. Stoll at [email protected]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123801450038141147.html
paologorgo
Chapter 11
Sources say more than 6,000 UAW workers have accepted GM's (GM) buyout offer, meeting internal goals and doubling analyst expectations. With 10% of its workers on the way out, GM will be able to hire new staff at half the union rate. GM +12% premarket.
paologorgo
Chapter 11
GM Unlikely To Hit Goal Of March 31 Restructuring
General Motors Corp. has been chipping away at the massive restructuring plan it submitted to the U.S. government last month, but it is unlikely to meet a March 31 deadline for gaining concessions from its main union and bondholders.
The company said Thursday that 7,600 U.S. factory workers volunteered to leave the company under a buyout program, fewer than GM had hoped. The auto maker has negotiated another agreement with the United Auto Workers union that could allow it to trim as many as 10,000 more positions by October, according to people familiar with that plan.
But GM still has ample work to do, including convincing the UAW to return to the bargaining table to restructure $20 billion in health-care benefits for retirees.
The UAW has said it prefers to negotiate a health-care agreement similar to one it reached recently with Ford Motor Co., but GM has said the Ford deal won't meet GM's cost-cutting needs.
The UAW also has said it won't negotiate with GM on the health plan until the company's bondholders, who carry $27 billion in unsecured debt, offer deeper concessions. Under terms of its government loans, GM is expected to cut its unsecured debt by two-thirds by offering a debt-for-equity exchange.
GM earlier this week made a new offer to a committee representing the bondholders, but the two sides are not closer to an agreement, according to people familiar with the matter.
The stalemate means GM could trip a March 31 deadline for the bondholder and union health-care deals imposed by the Treasury Department. However, officials on President Barack Obama's auto-industry task force appear willing to extend the deadline by 30 days, said several people briefed on the matter.
The deadline was put into place by the Bush administration when it granted $13.4 billion in emergency loans to the company, along with $4 billion for Chrysler LLC, in December. GM and Chrysler have asked for as much as an additional $22 billion in funding. Mr. Obama's task force is expected to address that and other auto-restructuring issues by March 31.
The task force has had a web of issues to consider. Last week, it laid out a $5 billion plan to aid auto-parts suppliers, and this week it is trying to sort out how to revive auto sales and testing the merits of a proposed alliance between Chrysler and Italian auto maker Fiat SpA, said people familiar with the situation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123807098254747521.html?ru=yahoo&mod=yahoo_hs
General Motors Corp. has been chipping away at the massive restructuring plan it submitted to the U.S. government last month, but it is unlikely to meet a March 31 deadline for gaining concessions from its main union and bondholders.
The company said Thursday that 7,600 U.S. factory workers volunteered to leave the company under a buyout program, fewer than GM had hoped. The auto maker has negotiated another agreement with the United Auto Workers union that could allow it to trim as many as 10,000 more positions by October, according to people familiar with that plan.
But GM still has ample work to do, including convincing the UAW to return to the bargaining table to restructure $20 billion in health-care benefits for retirees.
The UAW has said it prefers to negotiate a health-care agreement similar to one it reached recently with Ford Motor Co., but GM has said the Ford deal won't meet GM's cost-cutting needs.
The UAW also has said it won't negotiate with GM on the health plan until the company's bondholders, who carry $27 billion in unsecured debt, offer deeper concessions. Under terms of its government loans, GM is expected to cut its unsecured debt by two-thirds by offering a debt-for-equity exchange.
GM earlier this week made a new offer to a committee representing the bondholders, but the two sides are not closer to an agreement, according to people familiar with the matter.
The stalemate means GM could trip a March 31 deadline for the bondholder and union health-care deals imposed by the Treasury Department. However, officials on President Barack Obama's auto-industry task force appear willing to extend the deadline by 30 days, said several people briefed on the matter.
The deadline was put into place by the Bush administration when it granted $13.4 billion in emergency loans to the company, along with $4 billion for Chrysler LLC, in December. GM and Chrysler have asked for as much as an additional $22 billion in funding. Mr. Obama's task force is expected to address that and other auto-restructuring issues by March 31.
The task force has had a web of issues to consider. Last week, it laid out a $5 billion plan to aid auto-parts suppliers, and this week it is trying to sort out how to revive auto sales and testing the merits of a proposed alliance between Chrysler and Italian auto maker Fiat SpA, said people familiar with the situation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123807098254747521.html?ru=yahoo&mod=yahoo_hs
Massimo S.
Nuovo forumer
Qualcuno la conosce? Sembra interessante questa Ford 6,25% 22/05/2009 (XS0076244259). Pare che il prezzo sia 86-88. Ma è possibile a due mesi dal rimborso?
Non la conosco. Comunque vedo che è molto illiquida e quindi, non scambiando, si trovano in giro prezzi non aggiornati. L'unica quotazione aggiornata si può trovare sull'ICMA. Il prezzo di ieri è 97.
ms
troppidebiti
Forumer storico
Non la conosco. Comunque vedo che è molto illiquida e quindi, non scambiando, si trovano in giro prezzi non aggiornati. L'unica quotazione aggiornata si può trovare sull'ICMA. Il prezzo di ieri è 97.
ms
e come si accede a questo icma? c' è un sito web?