A motoring round-up
Former Ford chief elected at Continental AG
THE SUPERVISORY Board of Continental AG has elected Prof Dr Ing Wolfgang Reitzle as its chairman.
Reitzle is the former head of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group until May 2002 and was a former BMW executive.
The Supervisory Board of Continental has also appointed Wolfgang Schfer as a regular member of the Continental AG executive board. He will take up his appointment on January 1, 2010.
Jos A Avila was also appointed to the executive board of Continental AG. He will take over as head of the Powertrain division.
Following the meeting, the new Continental Supervisory Board chairman Prof Reitzle noted: “With the personnel decisions made today, the executive board of Continental AG is now complete and well structured. This creates the basis for leading Continental on into a sustainably successful future.”
Worker unrest rattles Opel Magna deal
GENERAL MOTORS looked poised to sign over carmaker Opel to Canada’s Magna as fears the EU might scupper the deal were dispelled, but Spanish workers planned strikes to protest against looming cost cuts.
EU antitrust regulators have no plans to block Magna’s acquisition of GM’s European arm, a European Commission spokesman said in Brussels yesterday.
The statement eased fears the transaction could be scotched by EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes’s concerns that German state aid to Opel – which employs around 50,000 people, half of them in Germany – may break the bloc’s rules.
The office of British Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson had said going ahead with the Opel sale – including British unit Vauxhall – to Magna was contingent on satisfying the EU.
The deal – which Magna would hope to conclude within weeks of signing the contract – hit another snag, though, when Spanish workers at Opel’s plant at Figueruelas voted on Tuesday to strike in protest at cuts included in the Magna package. With Opel poised to run out of cash by mid-January, it was in nobody’s interests to re-open the bidding process for the carmaker. – Reuters
VW to distribute Seat from Nov 1st
THE DISTRIBUTION of Seat cars will be taken over by Volkswagen Group Ireland on November 1st and managing director Paul Willis told Motors that it will offer an attractive finance incentive from that date.
“The Seat brand used to have a 2.5 per cent market share in Ireland and now it is at around 1 per cent which is very sad, but we have some very good products and we have done some research with the Seat consumers and found that finance is a very important factor. For that reason we will offer a 6.75 per cent APR hire purchase finance offer on all Seat cars from November.
There are 29 Seat dealers in Ireland which is an extra- ordinarily large number given the 1 per cent market share.