Welcome to another day in the life of Saab. But first let's wrap up yesterday which was a wild day.
First we got the great news that Saab is securing EUR 70 million in bridge funding by getting a loan from an international bank (probably German and probably Deutsche bank). Chinese Youngman will guarantee the loan. The price Saab has to pay is putting up non-exclusive rights to the Pheonix technology as collateral. Later in the day it became known that this EUR 70 million loan will take approx. two weeks to be finalized, in other words, Saab won't have the money until 26 September.
Then two hours later two of the four labour unions at Saab went to the Vänersborg District Court asking the court to declare Saab bankrupt. The reason being unpaid wages for August. According to the court it will need approx. two weeks to prepare and the bankruptcy hearings will be held 26 September. In the meantime the unions can withdraw their requests. But for them to withdraw the request, Saab needs to pay the wages.
In the afternoon Saab filed their appeal to the Vänersborg District Court's rejection of Saab's application from last week to enter into voluntary reconstruction. This appeal was unfortunately handed in 20 minutes too late to be part of yesterday's shipment of post to the Court of Appeal for Western Sweden. This means that the Court of Appeal will not receive the appeal until Wednesday morning. We can expect that the Court of Appeal will make a decision whether to look at the case fairly quick, and if it decides to look at the case, we can hope to get a decision whether to allow reconstruction or not on Thursday maybe.
From the documents Saab handed in to the court, we learned that Chinese companies Pang Da and Youngman are very serious about investing in Saab and making Saab a profitable company. In addition to the EUR 245 million in initial equity investment, the companies have agreed to contribute additional capital when needed.
We also learned that Saab has developed a new extended range electric vehicle concept. A technology that would reduce the CO2 emissions of the Saab 9-3 to only 50 g CO2/km.
In other words another crazy Saab day.
The big question now is if the Court of Appeal will allow Saab to enter reconstruction and if it does, which ruling will come first, bankruptcy or reconstruction? According to "legal experts", the first ruling will be the one that applies. And if the Court of Appeal rejects Saab appeal, then the question is if the EUR 70 million will come quick enough to avoid bankruptcy.
So fasten your seatbelts, the ride has just begun!
A blog fueled by enthusiasm about Saab, the greatest car company between the North and the South Pole. And their cars, which probably is the only cars that would start on a cold and crispy South Pole morning.
