Saab company Archives

Press Release: SAAB AUTOMOBILE FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY

Zeewolde, The Netherlands, 19 December 2011 – Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swan) announces that Saab Automobile AB (Saab Automobile), Saab Automobile Tools AB and Saab Powertrain AB filed for bankruptcy with the District Court in Vänersborg, Sweden this morning.

After having received the recent position of GM on the contemplated transaction with Saab Automobile, Youngman informed Saab Automobile that the funding to continue and complete the reorganization of Saab Automobile could not be concluded. The Board of Saab Automobile subsequently decided that the company without further funding will be insolvent and that filing bankruptcy is in the best interests of its creditors. It is expected that the Court will approve of the filing and appoint receivers for Saab Automobile very shortly.

Swan does not expect to realize any value from its shares in Saab Automobile and will write off its interest in Saab Automobile completely.

D-Day?

It’s Monday here in Australia as I write this.

Later today, in Sweden, there will be a court hearing to determine whether Saab’s reorganisation should continue. To say there’s a lot hanging in the balance would be the understatement of the year.

Here’s the scenario, as seen from someone on the other side of the world and somewhat out of the loop*:

The outcome of that hearing will depend largely on the future plan that Saab has developed to carry the business forward. Details about that plan will no doubt be forthcoming at the time, but all indications are that it will hinge upon setting up the business in a compartmentalised way so as to separate current models built with GM’s intellectual property from future models developed in conjunction with our Chinese partners, Youngman.

The other (perhaps most) crucial element of today’s proceedings will be evidence of support shown by Youngman. The Jerry Maguire phrase “Show Me The Money” feels kind of appropriate here. November wages are already overdue and December wages are due only days from now. Swedish media reports in the last few hours indicate that there may be signs of nerves within Youngman, thanks primarily to statements made by our former parent.

Over the weekend, General Motors re-stated its intention to withhold support for any such deal. From our end, it is contended that GM’s support is not needed as the proposal will not change the ownership structure of Saab. Formal dealings with Youngman will be setup in another entity focused on new model development for the future. I don’t know if it’s the job of a judge in Vänersborg to sort that out, but I guess we’ll find out pretty soon.

I’m not normally one given to poking an angry bear in the ribs, but I’d like to reiterate something I wrote here on Inside Saab a while ago – Ford found a way to get a similar deal done for Volvo, and I’m sure they’re keen on protecting their interests in China, too. This deal can, and should, be done. No less a man than Keith Crain, the Editor-in-Chief of Automotive News agrees.

Is today D-Day? All indications point that way right now, but this story has had so many twists and turns that it would be a brave man who attached any level of conviction to his prediction.

This is such a great company. It must survive and I hope that common sense and goodwill prevails today, for the sake of everyone who has an interest in the outcome: Our employees, our suppliers, our dealers and distributors, and of course, our customers.

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* Again, I have to express my own personal frustration at not being able to bring readers more information about this process. The shackles are necessary, even if they are ultimately self-defeating and incredibly frustrating.

Watching the Saab reorganisation reports

Tis the season to be ~~jolly~~ nervous…..

The Examiner is posing some Dear Santa questions from various stakeholders in the car industry:

Saab Owners: A glimmer of hope for the future of their beloved, quirky sport sedan.

Actually, I think most people are wishing for a future hatchback, but that aside….

Yes, people are indeed looking for hope for Saab Automobile. This weekend’s going to be a crucial one as we have a very important court hearing on Monday afternoon and some key events leading up to that hearing will go a long way in determining the short term future of the company.

The Examiner’s info is a little bit outdated (not uncommon) but there is plenty of hope for this company if we can overcome a few short term, not-insignificant obstacles.

Naturally, I keep a pretty close eye on what’s being reported in the motoring press about Saab’s current fight to survive. It will come as no surprise that many commentators wrote Saab off a long time ago.

e.g. The Truth About Cars:

all these delays have only made it more likely that Saab will die on the week before Christmas.

Those are probably the kindest words uttered about Saab by TTAC in the last six months.

The news services generally report events as they happen, with a little bit of historical context thrown in. They rarely make predictions about what will happen next, most likely because they’ve learned from prior experience that with Saab, especially in 2011, you can’t tell what’s going to happen next 🙂

Commentators, on the other hand, are paid to provide commentary. They interpret and they use their varied levels of experience to predict what they think is going to happen in the future. That’s reasonably easy when it comes to most companies, but not with Saab, and many commentators had Saab dead and buried well before December 2011.

They’re generally a proud bunch and don’t like to change their predictions – egos are just as prominent amongst commentators as they are amongst auto executives and a reputation for reading the wind correctly is everything – but it’s good to see that some writers are at least recognising the incredibly gutsy fight being put up by the Saab executive here in Sweden.

Paul Eisenstein:

It’s proving a lot more risky than most folks might have anticipated to bet against the struggling Swedish automaker Saab.Just ask administrator Guy Lofalk.

Barely a week ago, he had recommended that the courts end Saab’s voluntary reorganization, which would have meant the collapse of the company, which has been struggling to find investors – or a buyer – since last spring. Instead, Lofalk has been fired and replaced with what appears to be a more willing administrator while Saab itself will have some more time to pull together a deal.

By the way, some reports (like this one at Reuters) might leave readers with the impression that Guy Lofalk won’t be allowed to resign his position as administrator. My understanding is that Lofalk has to stay on until Monday – the court hearing, again – which will give our creditors the opportunity to approve the change of administrator. So he will be able to leave the position, just not quite at the time of his choosing.

But back to slightly confounded journalists 🙂

From Just Auto:

Every week for months now, I expect to be writing a small obituary for Saab, gone to join the likes of Pontiac, Saturn, Oldsmobile, Rover, Austin et al in brand name heaven and, every week, another rabbit gets pulled out of the hat.

That’s the quote that started this whole post, actually.

The reasons that people write us off are understandable given that they’re not privy to all that’s happening at Saab. We’re a small fish in a big ocean, we’re in financial trouble, etc etc. We have some key stakeholders that have made decisions about our future for us and we’ve had to work around those decisions, which has made the process even longer.

But the key thing to remember here is that we DO have a lot of things going for us as a company. Perhaps the key thing going for us right now is the significant interest we have some from some well-resourced investors and the support we have from our closest stakeholders.

They key question is whether or not a structure can be found and put into motion quickly enough to reassure the decision makers. It’s quite literally a race against time. A valid solution is in place and should be presented on Monday. It’s a matter of whether or not we’ll be allowed the time to execute it.

From a media-watcher’s point of view, it’s just good to see some recognising that we’re working our butts off to achieve a good result here. And that we’re not doing it without reason.

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Have a good weekend. No prizes for guessing what’s on our Christmas wish list this year – a speedy positive outcome for our employees and a bright future for the Saab brand.

We at Saab intend to survive

Yesterday the newspapers had stories of impending doom, predicting a bankruptcy filing by Saab some time later that day. This journey we’re on is quite literally hour-by-hour at the moment, so I’m sure there were reasons for the papers to believe that the story was feasible at some point. But please don’t believe for a moment that anyone here at Saab wants to throw in the towel.

As you’ve seen via today’s news, our Chinese partners, Youngman, have transferred some funds to our accounts to help us fulfil some of our obligations. We are still working on securing vital funding needed to pay staff wages and continue with the reorganisation process, a process that we will petition for the continuation of this week.

Our discussions with our partners and stakeholders continue and our executive team are still working around the clock to see this company survive and continue into the future. We know that if we can clear the obstacles immediately in our path, that we have the people and the product to succeed. Clearing those obstacles is what we’re working on right now.

As always, thanks for your support. We know it’s been a roller-coaster and it may continue that way for a little while yet. But please know that we’re determined to succeed, and as you can see from the payment received today, we have supportive partners working with us to make sure we have the best chance possible to do so.

News: Payment transferred

News from the front office in Trollhattan:

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Saab confirms that the first payment of the funding, which was promised by Youngman, now has been transferred to Saab’s account. The efforts to secure the remaining funding, needed to pay salaries and continue the voluntary reorganization, continue and the work is moving progressively forward.

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Press Release: Swedish Automobile Continues Discussions With Youngman

Trollhättan, Sweden: Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swan) announces it is in discussion with Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co. Ltd. (Youngman) and a bank in China about an equity interest in Swan. The discussions include a short term solution to enable Saab Automobile to pay the November wages and continue reorganization. The outcome of the discussions is still uncertain. Any possible transaction would be subject to the approval of the relevant stakeholders.

Swan will keep the market informed of any developments.

Press Release: Saab GB Files For Administration

Trollhättan, Sweden: Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swan) and Saab Automobile AB (Saab Automobile) announce that Saab Great Britain Ltd (Saab GB) filed for administration with the High Court in London today.

The board of Saab GB is of the opinion that administration gives the company and creditors the necessary legal protection until the required funding for the company has been secured. The appointment of the administrator is effected by the directors of Saab GB. Once appointed, the administrator will take on the management powers of the directors.

Swan received a conditional funding commitment from Youngman for the payment of the wages of the employees of Saab Automobile and for the continuation of the activities of Saab GB. Saab Automobile and Saab GB have not yet received this funding.

The ‘why?’ of Saab staying alive

We’ve all been hanging on the ‘what?’ for so long. We’re all fatigued due to the lack of visible, tangible progress in the potential sale of Saab Automobile.

I’d like to take a moment and think again about the ‘why?’

Why should the sale of Saab be allowed to proceed? Why doesn’t the company, like so many analysts out there, acknowledge that the light at the end of the tunnel is actually a train coming at 200mph? Why do we want to live, rather than pack our collective bags and move on?

Because we have a valid place in this industry, that’s why. Because we care about what we do and the way we do it, and we believe that enough people care about the same philosophy to ensure us a future in the marketplace. Because we believe 200% that we can make this work.

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We have a great range of cars that are just one decision away from being produced. Not planned, but produced.

They’re the best cars we’ve ever built. They have better emissions than other full size, full power competitors. They have better design characteristics. They have fantastic build quality and the best thing about our vehicle range is that it’s only getting better.

The Saab 9-3 Griffin is the best 9-3 we’ve ever made – inside, outside and under the hood. It has a new full-power, full size diesel variant that will attract tax benefits in certain key markets due to it’s outstanding emissions figures. All that, with no sacrifice in cargo space or performance. No compromises.

The Saab 9-5 SportCombi is ready to complement the 9-5 Sedan as our flagship vehicle and the combi body is a welcome addition, especially in key European markets.

The Saab 9-4x is just plain outstanding. It’s been getting great reviews and we would love to be able to push this vehicle to its limits.

Read more about our vehicles here: In Saab’s Corner – Our vehicles.

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We have incredible people. I arrived into a baptism of fire when I started with Saab in April this year. Day three of my employment coincided with a factory stoppage that essentially continues to this day. All this time, Saab people have continued to plan where they can, to develop product where they can. We’ve learned to do things under pressure, without budgets, without contractor support. We’ve done all of this because it’s been necessary to do it. We’ve done this because we want Saab to succeed.

The Saab dealer tours in Germany, Austria and France have reinforced to me what wonderful people we have at Saab. I’ve been so touched by the emails I’ve received from people, customers expressing their gratitude for these tours, expressing their admiration for the new vehicles and dealers expressing the joy that they had in representing the Saab brand to their customers again.

I’ve had other emails, too, from dealers concerned about their futures. I’m concerned for them, too, and I know that our executive team are concerned about them because they’re the backbone of our distribution network. Many of them have been associated with Saab for decades. They’re family, and we’re all doing it tough together.

One word that you could use to describe Saab people (aside from intelligent, talented and a bunch of others) is resilient. We believe in what we do and that belief gives us some strength to keep on working. Our company took on safety before the marketing mavens made it popular, before the lawmakers made it mandatory. Our company took on turbocharging when fuel was less than a fifth of the price that it is today.

We do some things because we have to. We do many things because it’s the right way, the Saab way.

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Saab is still a wonderful brand with a fantastic history and a global presence. We have been kicked around, but never broken. We still have a lot of people in our corner. We enjoy great support from both the enthusiast community and the motoring fraternity. People want to see us succeed.

Saab still has a brilliant engineering crew, innovative design staff and flexible manufacturing capacity.

Saab has fantastic plans in place for future vehicles and progressive technical partners on our side to make those plans a reality.

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Right now our executive team are negotiating with our stakeholders and potential new owners to try and get an outcome that will satisfy everyone.

I sincerely hope that everything that can be done, is being done by all concerned. Saab will be a long-term commitment for whoever takes us on in the future, but we’ve got the tools and the plans in place to hold and build our place in this industry.

It’s easy to say we’re small, therefore we can’t make it. We believe that we can. With the right backing and the right partnerships in place, we can finish remodelling our business, build great Saab cars that find their market and build on that market for the future. We’ve already done a lot of work on those partnerships, all we need is the backing and the cooperation of those concerned to get things moving again.

There’s so much riding on this. The careers of so many good, talented people. The cars that are ready to go to market right now, and the cars that will come in the future.

As I’ve written many times before, I cannot imagine that a company with so much going for it could be left to die. It just doesn’t make any sense. We want to get this moving, and I sincerely hope that we can.

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For those who haven’t seen them, I’d encourage you to read the full series of In Saab’s Corner articles, prepared back in September.

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Saab delay submission to creditors in order to continue negotiations

Re-posted

As the day in question is tomorrow and there are still a few headlines going around about this, I thought it wise to bring it back to the top of the page.

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Despite the sound of the headline, this is not a press release.

The purpose of this posting is two-fold: to talk of the delay in the submission to creditors that was planned for November 22, and to clarify what was going to happen on that date.

As has been mentioned in the media already, Saab/Swan and Guy Lofalk have taken a decision to delay submitting their composition proposal to creditors. According to the time plan mentioned at the Creditors Meeting on October 31, this proposal was due to be submitted on November 22. As with much of what’s happening as part of this process, however, that date on that October plan was a preliminary date, and subject to change depending on the prevailing circumstances.

Right now, the prevailing circumstances include ongoing negotiations with our partners and stakeholders. We submitted a purchase proposal to General Motors, which they rejected. We are now negotiating a proposal with a view to getting an outcome that will be acceptable to all parties and it was held that the November 22 submission should be delayed in order to facilitate those ongoing negotiations.

There’s been a fair bit of anxiety over the November 22 date and what it might entail for Saab. It has been described in some reports as another Creditors Meeting, which implies a decision point in the process. This is not actually the case.

What was actually due to happen was the submission of what is referred to as a composition proposal. This is a proposal sent to creditors by Saab for their consideration, one that specifies how Saab intends to pay back outstanding debts, as well as a proposal on future payment and delivery terms. Our creditors and suppliers have been notified about this delay by Saab’s purchasing department as part of our ongoing conversation with stakeholders.

There is no replacement date for November 22 at this stage, but obviously everyone concerned would like to get this process moving as soon as possible. We also have to get it right, however, and the first crucial step in getting it done right is to get a purchase proposal together that all parties can approve, which is what we’re working on right now.

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TRADING UPDATE SWEDISH AUTOMOBILE N.V. – THIRD QUARTER 2011

TRADING UPDATE SWEDISH AUTOMOBILE N.V. (including SAAB AUTOMOBILE AB)
THIRD QUARTER 2011

Zeewolde, the Netherlands, 18 November 2011 – Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swan), a holding company that owns subsidiaries which produce and sell premium automobiles under the Saab and Spyker brands (together referred to as the “Group”), today issues a trading update for the third quarter of 2011 ended 30 September 2011. The Group is listed on NYSE Euronext Amsterdam (ticker symbol SWAN).

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

• Saab Automobile AB, Saab Automobile Powertrain AB and Saab Automobile Tools AB (together Saab Automobile) entered voluntary reorganization under Swedish law

• Longer term future and stability for Saab Automobile expected after signing of a memorandum of understanding with respect to a EUR 100 million conditional agreement on sale of all shares in Saab Automobile and Saab Great Britain Ltd. (Saab GB) to Pang Da Automobile Trade Company Ltd (Pang Da) and Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co., Ltd. (Youngman)

• Conditional agreement reached on sale of Spyker Automotive business to North Street Capital, LP with net proceeds for Swan of EUR 32 million

• Efficiency improvement initiative launched as part of voluntary reorganization process, in order to create more flexible and competitive cost structure

• Finalizing voluntary reorganization process, implementing revised business plan and restarting sustainable production top priorities for Saab Automobile management

• Sales performance seriously affected by production stoppages and tight liquidity situation during third quarter

CORPORATE AND OPERATIONAL REVIEW

Voluntary reorganization under Swedish law

While work continued throughout the third quarter to secure short-term financing, Saab Automobile concluded in early September that, considering Saab Automobile’s limited financial resources and the time needed to secure the required approvals for the investments by Pang Da and Youngman, a voluntary reorganization would entail the best preconditions for using existing resources in the most efficient way. The purpose of the voluntary reorganization process was to secure short-term stability while simultaneously attracting additional funding, pending the inflow of the equity contributions of Pang Da and Youngman.

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