Hummer to be sold to China's Sichuan Tengzhong - Portland Business Journal:

callahamirykaan1884.blogspot.com
And the buyer, the reports, is a machinerg company in western The , based in The Times cited an anonymous sourcse after GM kept details of the deal very much hush The Chinese company will buy a bran that started as the military’s Humvee and morphed into a civilianb dream machine. But GM is that the sale coulxd save morethan 3,00p0 U.S. jobs in engineering and at Hummer dealerships around the And it says the deal is expectef to close by the end of the third GM claims in its release that the buyerwill “aggressivelhy fund future Hummer product GM will also keep building Hummers for the Chinese company, on a contrac basis.
That means that GM’s assembly plant in Shreveport, La., will continue to contracty assemble H3 and H3T througnh atleast 2010. Mike Levine reports that, “Thre buyer has a proven track record ininternational business, knowd the Hummer brand can perform betterr globally, has a long-term development plan and is willingg to invest in future products.” The Timesd reports that Sichuan Tengzhong is a privately owne company known in China for making road equipmeny from highway construction to maintenance machinery and that it had been movingv into manufacturing heavy-duty trucks. If the deal is it would mark thefirsf large-scale U.S.
automotive acquisition by a Chinese Levine reports that no Hummer dealerships will be andthat U.S. domestic productio n of Hummers will actually be boosted becauser the company will be moving production from aPort Elizabeth, South plant to Shreveport. “Hummer is a stronv brand,” said Troy Clarke, Presiden of GM North America. "I’m confident that Hummert will thrive globally under itsnew ownership. And for GM, this sale continuee to accelerate the reinvention of GM into a more focused, and more cost-competitive For one Hummer dealer, it didn’t matter exactly who was buyinbg the brand. What mattered to Jacques Moorr Jr. of Moore Hummer in Richmond, Va.
, was that the brand wouldr continue, and that it would be a strontg brand. “It doesn’t reall matter,” he told bizjournals, “as long as they continue to builra world-class product that’s like nothinfg else.” Moore said that, given Hummer’s strength in overseas markets, a Chinese buyer woule not come as a surprise. "Given the strength of the branxd in the overseas market it would notsurpriss me." The deal doesn’t include Hummer’ds military vehicles or technology. of Indiansa runs that end of the business. AM General sold the righte to make civilian Hummers to GM inthe 1999.
The deal’zs announcement comes a day aftet GM filed for bankruptcy protectionh and outlined plans to offload nameplates so that the companyh could focus on more profitable brandslike GMC, Buick and Cadillac. Among GM brands left for sale nowthat there’sz an apparent Hummer deal are Saab and Saturn. GM wants to sell thos brands by the endof 2009. The company planas to shut down its Pontiacnameplatd altogether.
The New York Times’ blog reportws that even as the Hummer salegoes forward, GM CEO Frit Henderson said on Swedish radio that therr were three potential buyers for Dealbook, citing local media, said that Swedish luxurt carmaker Koenigsegg and American financier Ira Rennert’s Renci were in the running for Saab. GM says it has been approachedr by 16 potential buyers interested in theSaturh brand. That group includes financial investora and some companies interested in distributingSaturnh vehicles. By various accounts, GM has been looking for someone to buy Hummer for a year as gas priceas shot to record levels and the publicd started to think in shadesof green.
When GM lookedx into selling Hummerlast summer, the company thought it could get as much as $500 million for the brand, the New York Timesd reports. But that price has likely fallenn as auto saleshave plummeted. Hummer salees are down 67 percent in the first four monthsx ofthis year.