Ford's Top Execs Meet With Kerkorian
Truckers may not be spending much time in Nevada these days, but the big wigs from Ford are. T he Wall Street Journal [sub] reports that Chairman Bill Ford, CEO Alan Mulally and CFO Don Leclair have gone to Vegas for a sit down with Kirk Kerkorian, his attorney Terry Christensen and wing-man Jerome York. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. So no formal word on what went down between FoMoCo and the boss man at MGM-Mirage, and what kind of suite Ford got comped. If and when FoMoCo needs more cash to keep the lights on, it's unlikely to be able to borrow it legit. Everything up to and including the Blue Oval is already hocked with the well dressed pawn brokers at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase. . When the time comes, FoMoCo is going to need an equity investment, not more debt. Kerkorian seems like the only player who is in, but only on his terms. As we've speculated here before, those terms are likely to include full voting power stock, not the pretend stock normal shareholders get. Goodfellas indeed.
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After GM finished wasting Kirk's investment away you'd think he'd had enough of the auto industry.
GM never got any cash from Kerkorian, he bought those shares on the open market just as he has done so far with Ford. At one point he had bought almost 10% of GM's shares on the open market, but he later sold most, if not all, of his holdings. None of him money ended up in the GM treasury though as all of the transactions were between Kerkorian's company and other shareholders. Just as GM doesn't make any money if I sell you my used Chevy truck, they don't make any money if already existing shares are traded between shareholders.
I had to do a second take of your headline. For a moment, I thought it read, Ford’s Top Execs Meet With Kevorkian. I thought they wanted to commit suicide. Actually, perhaps that would be the honorable thing to do.
There is a little more news leaking out about this situation today. From Reuters: http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080619/ford.html?.v=7 "Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian raised his stake in Ford Motor Co (NYSE:F - News) to 6.5 percent this week and said he was willing to support the automaker's turnaround with an infusion of additional capital." " Any additional capital from Kerkorian would be to give Ford more flexibility as it restructures, Tracinda said in the filing with U.S. securities regulators. Kerkorian's offer of additional capital raises questions about the long-term control of the company by the Ford family, which owns just 3 percent of the automaker's stock."