It is Friday afternoon (22 July) and yet again, Saab is embroiled in yet another twist to its tortuous saga, that seemingly always takes on extra life towards the weekend.
After yesterday’s news the automaker would push back a mooted restart by nearly three weeks, came today’s bombshell that a parts supplier had filed for Saab division Saab Tools’ bankruptcy.
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For whatever reason Saab is declining to name the supplier – successive communications to just-auto avoided mentioning who it was – but a call to the Vanersborgs District Court – in whose jurisdiction the Swedish automaker is based – confirmed SweParts Tools had filed an application for Saab Tools’ bankruptcy.
In itself the money – a shade under $800,000 – does not represent a vast amount of cash to Saab. But it’s clearly important to SweParts who must have just had enough trying to secure settlement and decided to take drastic action to force Saab to the table.
Saab says it has agreed “payment terms” although it is not clear whether or not the debt has been paid in full, but does SwePart just represent the tip of the iceberg?
There are rumours in Sweden of many suppliers that have lodged applications with the Swedish debt enforcement agency Kronofogden to recover their money and perhaps SwePart is just the first to break cover so radically and go public.
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By GlobalDataIndeed a spokeswoman for the Kronofogden confirmed to just-auto today there “could be around 100 suppliers” who were linked to the debt agency in a bid to recover their money, although she was unable to reveal any amount.
Saab moved extremely quickly to resolve the issue today – presumably aware yet another avalanche of negative publicity was about to descend on it during the weekend – but has it found the $800,000 in its entirety or has it managed to placate the supplier with future promises?
Either way, the omens don’t look good for the embittered automaker, which faces a titanic battle to convince its suppliers, dealers, employees and not least, its customers, it has a future.
