You know the financial crisis (you tired of that phrase, too?) is really stinging when sudden merger talks pop up. No, it’s not BMW and Mercedes-Benz or General Motors and Ford Motor Company: it’s GM and the privately held Chrysler LLC.
Preliminary talks include the possibility of Cerberus (the current owner of Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep) handing over their automobile manufacturing business in exchange for the 49% stake GM holds in GMAC Financial Services.
General Motors says that there is nothing unusual about talks with other automakers but that they are experiences “unprecedented related to uncertainties in the financial markets” and refuse to consider bankruptcy.. Cerberus says they don’t comment on private meetings.
Is this purely an issue of survival? Why would two struggling automakers combine their struggles? Under the philosophy of ‘two heads are better than one’, combining the struggles and troubles goes hand-in-hand with combining, for instance, platforms; architecture; manufacturing plants; parts suppliers; and – dare we say it – workers.
