GM Beds Russian Oligarch

by Edward Niedermeyer

February 27th, 2008 2:53 PM

Thomson Financial News [via CNN Money] reports that GM will announce a joint venture with the GAZ Group of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska's Basic Element company. The team plan to build the Chevrolet Lacetti (Suzuki Forenza/Reno) at a factory based in Deripaska's home oblast of Nizhny Novgorod. The plant will initially produce 50k of the Daewoo-designed vehicles per year, increasing to a planned to 300k units p/a. Basic Element, will invest a billion dollars in the project. This is not Deripaska's first flirtation with the American car industry. Last May, he bought a $1.5b stake in Magna International, a move which allowed the Canadian company to tender an ultimately unsuccessful bid for Chrysler. Despite his new joint venture with GM and a crucial stake in Chrysler's supply line, Russia's youngest and richest billionaire in Russia isn't allowed to visit the United States due to "suspected links to the criminal community" Given this inconvenience, Mr. Deripaska will likely look once more to Magna to act on his behalf when American automakers start holding holding pre-bankruptcy fire sales.

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Psionic Wibbly on Feb 27, 2008

we should have a monthly numbers game for billionaires; ie who is worth how much each month and the year on year % rise or fall.just the way we have a monthly car sales table; every so often you may find that billionaire falls off the charts permanently esp if vladimir putin takes a dislike to him :D the contenders would be amongst others; Bill Gates, Warren Buffet representing the big 2 and the others representing the europeans and asians.

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Mel23 on Feb 27, 2008

I like the way GM is taking the long term view of their global market. Buy a company that went bankrupt on their own, slap your logo on their 'quality' products that sell as your introduction in large parts of the world. Then top that off by climbing in bed with characters such as this, and wonder why your market collapses in a few years when Toyota/Honda get around to sending in their products into these markets.

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Brock_Landers on Feb 28, 2008

All active Russian oligarhs are Putin's henchmen servicing their motherland/czar. Those who were not are in jail or dead.

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Donal Fagan on Mar 06, 2008

Thanks, Martin. My wife just ran across your kind words (while she was checking up on me). :-)

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