It’s been a hectic couple of weeks for General Motors and its Venezuelan operations. Government authorities in Venezuela illegally seized the automaker’s manufacturing hub, which prompted GM to cease all operations in the country.
The automaker laid off its entire staff of employees — by text message at that — and paid out severance. That seemed to be the end of it all. Meanwhile, GM vowed to exercise its legal rights and fight back. Now, the tide seems to be shifting.
The Detroit Free Press reports GM may return to Venezuela after all of the commotions.
GM Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens seemed to execute an about-face surrounding the decision to leave Venezuela.
“We don’t necessarily want to exit the country, but certainly it’s not an environment that you can invest in or run a normal business at this point,” he said Friday in a conversation with reporters to discuss first quarter earnings.
GM hadn’t produced a car at the Valencia-based industrial hub since 2015.
Adding more curiosity to it all was Venezuelan Labor Minister Francisco Torrealba’s invitation to have GM claim the plant back.
“The Venezuelan state is supporting, and wants to see, production at General Motors return to its maximum level in the hands of its legitimate owners,” he said on state television. “The government is willing to provide all the guarantees so that General Motors normalizes its operations in Venezuela and produces lots of cars as it has for decades.”
Stay tuned as we continue to follow the latest from Venezuela.
Comments
“…GM may return to Venezuela after all of the commotions after all.”
Do you guys happen to proof your work before you publish? SMH
When they quote GM’s Chuck Stevens and Venezuela’s Torrealba, and the thing they are reporting is what these people said, then yes, they have proof, it’s in the names.
Don’t we love alt-rite folks? Hyperintelligentsia who just gut-feel conspiracies everywhere.
“Where’z the evidence that round wheels work better than square ones. EVERYBODY KNOWS square wheels are more American, and round wheels hate us!”
“The Clintons are running a kids-for-sale corporation out of a pizza store near a bookshop in DC. Let’s get ’em!”
Did you bother to look where that sentence came from? It didn’t come from a source. Sean himself typed it out himself and it was a flubbed sentence.
Looks like you woke them up and they fixed it 😉
See what happens when dealers and unions work together?
Isn’t it funny how the USA says it values the ‘separation of powers’ in the Prez/Congress/SC, yet when it comes to corporations, the idea of equal power amongst corp/union/dealer is “unamerican”.
All I know GM had good earning Friday, today GM is down 1% on theses earning and Tesla is up $10 a share on a media hyped picture of a Electric Truck. Oh Tesla isn’t producing the Model 3 yet. GM needs to hire Musk to run its P/R Dept.
GM is like lost in the 50″s
GM gave us evidence last month that the company was fairing better than many rivals. March was a very rough month for auto sales. Ford’s sales fell 7% year over year. Fiat Chrysler (NYSE:FCAU) sales fell 5%. Toyota (NYSE:TM) and Honda (NYSE:HMC) fell 2.1% and 0.7% respectively. Contrarily, GM’s sales actually increased 2%. This was a strong precursor to this quarters financial results.
-Q1 revenues grew by 10.6% to over $41 billion
-North American revenue grew 10.7% to over $29 billion.
-GM Financial have revenue growth of 38.7% to $2.9 billion.
-Most important for shareholders, diluted earnings per share of $1.70 mark a 37.1% jump year over year. This crushed estimates of $1.47.
Until the government in Venezuala realizes that the only way to prosperity is through private ownership of production there’s really no reason for any multi-national to invest there.