Swedish business news site Dagens Industri reports that Chinese Youngman is the bankruptcy administators first choice as buyers of Saab.
Representatives from Chinese Youngman are expected back in Sweden shortly to continue discussions with the bankruptcy administrators concerning a possible acquisition of Saab. The company has already invested at least EUR 70 million in Saab, which has given the company among other things rights to part of the newly developed Saab future vehicle technology. Now Youngman wants the rest as well.
According to DI's sources, the administrators have chosen to negotiate with Youngman with the goal of selling all of Saab. The problem is time. On January 19th it will be one month since Saab filed for bankruptcy and as time passes both employees, suppliers and customers will disappear. If the negotiations with Youngman have not proven sucessfull within January 19th, the assets of Saab might be sold in pieces.
The management of Saab has according to DI offered the administrators to continue working until January 20th, helping with sorting out the GM technology licenses and deals with Saab.
One obvious problem with selling Saab to Youngman is General Motors annoucement that it will not supply Saab with technology should the company become Chinese owned. Earlier it has been said that Youngman hopes to at least be able to produce the current Saab 9-3, which utilises mostly technology owned by Saab, awaiting the next generation of Saab vehicles based on Saab's future Phoenix platform.
The Turkish company Brightwell Holdins, which has made it clear that it wants to buy all of Saab, said yesterday that GM would be positive to a deal where the Turkish company buys Saab. Which would of course seem to make Brightwell a good match. But so far GM has not been in discussion with any parties about supplying GM technology to Saab in the future.
"We have been contacted by many parties interested in buying the Saab assets and getting access to GM's technology, but we are not in discussion with any of them," GM spokesman James Cain told Swedish Radio.
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