Except for its European arm, General Motors has been successful in its global operations. In 2011, for instance, GM lost $747 million in Europe; meanwhile, GM North America earned $1.7 billion before taxes this past quarter and GM Europe lost $300 million — and that’s an improvement. As such, GM CEO Dan Akerson has declared the situation a “four alarm fire” and went on to conclude that the division will need to be restructured once again.
These changes may include the closure of two plants by 2015 — as the Ellesemere Port plant in Britain, and the Bochum, Germany plant are approaching the chopping block. By 2016, the Gliwice, Poland, is scheduled to increase capacity by 25 percent. But by 2016, GM wants to import up to 300,000 cars to Europe from Mexico, Korea and even China. After this drawn out process concludes, GM Europe should be in better financial shape.
Comments
The restructuring needs to happen now… Why wait, stop living the pipe dream; shut the plants down get rid of vehicles that don’t work and move on…
Yes, a drastic, quick restructuring is necessary to return Opel to profitability. But I think things like politics and labor deals are holding GM back from doing the same kind of dramatic turnaround they did in the U.S.
I can’t see much in the way of political or union power to stop GM closing plants now, even if it resulted in shortages of vehicles. Europe costs are way out of line.