On April 11th I wrote about the parallels between what Saab is going through and the dying days of MG-Rover and with the latest news that Saab is unable to pay its staff for June is yet another blow to a business that has been teetering on the edge of failure for months.
We’ve seen a revolving door of Chinese investors come and go and whilst Saab has been issuing optimistic statements over done deals and sales of equity stakes like confetti at a wedding, they’ve all come to nought and there’s every reason to believe that the Beijing government won’t allow the latest rescue to happen. Dealing with the Chinese is notoriously difficult and needs to be done away from the harsh glare of media scrutiny, something that Saab has singularly failed to do.
The CEO of Europe’s supplier body, CLEPA’s Lars Holmqvist has called for Saab to declare itself bankrupt to allow its employees to get state guarantees of salaries for six months as “…no white knight…arriving.”
While Saab’s largest union, IF Metall predicts that upto 10,000 jobs could go in manufacturing and the supply chain which would be a catastrophe for Sweden.
There might yet be a future for Saab, but it’s unlikely to be in Sweden. Remember what happened to MG-Rover? Once it had collapsed it was picked up for a pittance from the administrators by the Chinese who stripped the factory bare, shipped the lines and technology back home and restarted assembly there all at a fraction of the cost of buying into the business now.
Why not save yourself a small fortune, wait for the company to collapse and then deal with the administrators? It was done to MG-Rover and I can see Saab heading the same way.
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