General Motors (GM) will not acknowledge that choosing Opel’s buyers happened without political pressure, daily Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) said, citing GM sources.

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Confirming that Magna and its Russian partners were chosen out of purely economic reasons would leave GM open to lawsuits worth billions, the sources added.


The European Commission (EC) has requested this confirmation from GM and the German government in order to approve the state aid that has been promised for Opel’s restructuring.


All participants in the bid for Opel suggested the German government insistently campaigned for Magna and its partner Sberbank, FTD wrote. It is thought that the promise to grant the automaker additional state aid was linked to the condition to choose Magna and Sberbank as buyers.


The GM board of directors will once again htdiscuss the plan to sell Opel to Magna on 3 November.

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