General Motors

By John Terrett in Americas on November 6th, 2011
President Obama on tour at the General Motors' assembly plant in Detroit,

A year from now Americans will be voting in one of the most important presidential elections ever; on a backdrop that is likely to be the harshest economic downturn in 80 years.

The mid-western state of Michigan has voted Democrat in the last five presidential cycles and it will be a key state in November 2012.

Mr Obama has spent a lot of money and time on Michigan in the past four years but many wonder if he's done enough to entice voters to go for him again in a state that has a Republican governor and legislator?

Al Jazeera English sent me to Michigan to find out if I could find any green shoots of economic recovery. I found them, but let’s not kid ourselves.

The city of Detroit will run out of money next March unless deals can be struck with the unions. There's still grinding poverty in Michigan - especially in Detroit and Grand Rapids.

By John Terrett in Americas on November 18th, 2010
AFP photo

After 18 months the US auto giant General Motors is making a spectacular return to the stock market on Thursday.
 
It's main shareholder - the federal government - is selling a huge chunk of stock to the public to raise funds and pay off debts in what's expected to be the second biggest initial public offering in US history after Visa - and may even turn out to be bigger than that.
 
The stock sale comes just days after GM turned in a far bigger than expected profit for the third business quarter of 2010.
 
To find out more I went to a very grand looking modern building on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC that houses the General Motor's "embassy".
 
They don't call it an embassy, of course, but that's essentially what it is.

By Abid Ali in Business on February 23rd, 2010
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
There’s a stench of protectionism over the US reaction to Toyota’s troubles.
 
The hysteria in political circles is overdone and reminds me of the time Dubai decided to buy P&O’s ports. Dubai was forced to hand over the reigns to the US ports because it posed a threat to national security.
 
Dubai did what it has always done; it spent millions of dollars on a public relations offensive. It came as no surprise that some in the United States did not know where Dubai was. But those from the US media who were flown to the emirate were surprised at what they saw when they arrived in Dubai – a modern, prosperous emirate. Something you assumed they did not associate with the Middle East.
 
By Abid Ali in Business on November 4th, 2009
Photo by AFP

General Motors' decision to abandon the sale of its European business Opel should come as no surprise. As the company plunged into bankruptcy, there was talk that the board would keep hold of loss-making Opel.

GM was never keen on the deal with Canadian car-parts maker Magna and Russia’s Sberbank – it was forced into the decision by the Germans with the promise of $6.58 billion in state aid. GM was also reluctant to give away its technology to Russian automakers through Sberbank’s investment.

It would appear that GM and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are the winners in this chess game, while Opel’s 50,000 workers have been left out to dry.

GM bought time to clear up its mess – becoming the world’s largest industrial company to file for bankruptcy in the process.

By Teymoor Nabili in Business on May 29th, 2009

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is due in China this weekend.  Certainly there are plenty of topics, and differences, to keep him, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao occupied for a while. But on top of the issues of currency, trade barriers and Treasury purchases, the Wall Street Journal says Geithner also plans to tell Beijing it needs to take ”drastic measures” to reform it’s economy.

“That means encouraging Beijing to offer more generous health care, retirement, welfare,  educational and other benefits …”

I’m sure the prescription will provoke a wry smile or two in Beijing, and maybe even a polite enquiry along the lines of  “and do you plan to introduce these benefits at home, Mr Geithner?”

By John Terrett in Business on May 28th, 2009

I spent Thursday covering the General Motors story again.

I went from live-shots for our channel at the Reuters Building in Times Square, to a GM dealership on Manhattan’s west side, back to Times Square again to interview people about whether they’d still think about buying a Chevvy or Caddy … and finally onto the New York Stock Exchange for more live reporting.

I ended the day in Harlem - but that was a micro-finance story - of which more on Saturday.

What a difference a day makes in business reporting, eh?

Twenty four hours ago GM bond holders had rejected the company’s offer to give them a a ten percent equity stake in exchange for the 27 billion dollars they’d pumped into the firm … threatening to fight for their money back through the bankruptcy courts.

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