IMPORTANT NEWS: National Electric Vehicle Sweden has agreed to buy the assets of Saab Automobile and the sale is expected to be finalized during the summer.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Saab reconstruction administrator acting as Government puppet?

On September 21 Saab went into reconstruction and the court appointed Guy Lofalk as administrator. Lofalk was Saab's suggestion. But now Swedish Radio's sources claim that Lofalk is acting as a puppet for the Government instead of working for Saab.

According to Swedish Radio P4 Väst's sources, Lofalk is working for Sweden's Ministry of Finance. The task: To get rid of both the Chinese company Youngman which wants to become part owner of Saab, and Saab's acting CEO Victor Muller.

Furthermore, the sources claim that Lofalk went to China to make sure that Youngman and the second Chinese partner Pang Da would withdraw from the deal with Saab and therefore also withdraw all promises of cash investments. This would also be the reason that the EUR 70 million Youngman has promised Saab in bridging loan is yet to appear on Saab's accounts.

The sources claim that Guy Lofalk has told the Chinese that the European Investment Bank (EIB) will terminate the loan agreement with Saab and demand that the loan is being repaid. Something which will lead to the Swedish Government seizing both Saab Autmobile Parts AB and Saab Automobile Tools AB which has been used as collateral for the Swedish state loan guarantee given to the EIB. 

Then the journey of Lofalk took him to the Swedish National Debt Office (NDO) where he told the NDO that the Chinese had not paid the promised loan to Saab and the NDO should tell the EIB to go ahead with terminating the loan.

And all this can be done because Geely is now a willing buyer of Saab. And the people pulling the strings would be Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Minister of Finance Anders Borg. They want to get rid of both Victor Muller and Vladimir Antonov.

The sources claim that the administrator Guy Lofalk has been doing all this on behalf of the Moderate Party (Moderata samlingspartiet), where both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance are prominent figures. The Ministry of Enterprise which has handled the Saab case so far and is run by the Centre Party (Centerpartiet) has been kept in the dark. And the management of Saab has of course also been pushed entirely aside.

Does all this sound like a conspiracy or what? All I can say about all this if it is true (and Swedish Radio is usually a very reliable news provider), is what the h*** is up with the Swedish Government? They have done nothing but making Saab's life hard for the past three years. What about stop mixing politics with business?