The words ‘profit’ and ‘Opel’ featured in the news this week.
After BMW last week turned in the sort of record numbers to make any GM executive tasked with restoring Opel to profitability weep, Volkswagen did pretty much the same thing. Leading to a EUR7,500 bonus for workers. Nice work, if you can get it. There was also a little bit of entertaining AGM niggle when someone compared Herr Winterkorn’s own 90% pay rise with shareholders’ dividend of around 33%. The question was answered by chief financial officer Hans Dieter Potsch: “For shareholders it is not only dividends that count but corporate success and the corresponding increase in share price. I don’t think they have any cause for complaint.” The man should be VW’s head of PR…
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Our Simon Warburton was out and about this week visiting a key part of a sprawling empire – the Magna Steyr contract assembly complex in Graz, Austria. In wide ranging interviews with Magna International’s Europe president Guenther Apfalter, the Opel question inevitably came up, and was answered emphatically, “zero zero chance” of another acquisition bid. Clearly, the Canadian-based company has moved on from events in 2009.
Another restructuring company made a significant move this week – Visteon has sold its lighting unit to India’s Varroc with chief Donald Stebbins saying the sale allows the one-time Ford parts unit “to focus on our core climate and electronics businesses and our joint venture relationships, which are positioned for profitable growth and market leadership”.
India’s auto industry is never far out of the news these days. Among this week’s items of note – the possibility of Jaguar assembly there in three to five years. That would follow on from last year’s start of Land Rover Freelander build from CKD kits at parent Tata Motors’ Pune plant.
Building locally would present some challenges – aluminium body shells being trickier to weld than steel should Tata/JLR decide to do the XF or XJ locally – but it would reduce the tax levied on full imports and make Indian retail prices more competitive with locally assembled Audi, BMW and Mercedes. Jaguars have been built overseas from kits before, in New Zealand (with exports to Australia) and South Africa, also to dodge high import taxes on CBUs, but the cars are much more complex now, 30 years on.
Also from India this week came news GM’s local unit is looking at exporting locally developed diesel technology to other markets. As petrol prices rise, Indian buyers are increasingly turning to more economical diesels – and carmakers have just dodged a bullet as yesterday’s budget did not include an expected tax hike on diesel vehicles, nor the cutting of a generous subsidy on the fuel.
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts – Deputy Editor – just-auto.com
