Place your bets... Big GM announcement at 9:00...

Bankruptcy?

Management shakeup?

Both?

New initiatives with the union and salary workers?

Health care cuts to employees?

Re-absorption of Delphi?

Plant closures?

A merger?

I didn't know that any big announcement was coming. Is this national press conference big? CNN press conference big?

Probably union stuff and health care.

I don't think it would be any of the rest of your list. But, I guess all are possible.

New Camaro? Haha, yeah... right...

New Camaro? Haha, yeah... right...
LOL. "The good news is that we plan to produce a new Camaro. The bad news is that it will be called the Renault Camaro."

I'd bet on health care/legancy costs type announcement.

Second guess: Partial GMAC spinoff or segregation.

3rd guess: Delphi related.

Apparently they are saying it's health care related and that it will save 3 billion a year, and the UAW has agreed.

http://media.gm.com/servlet/GatewayServlet?target=http://image.emerald.gm.com/gmnews/viewmonthlyreleasedetail.do?domain=74&docid=19615

its health care

Agreement to Reduce Retiree Health-care Liability by About $15 Billion
Sale of Controlling Interest in GMAC to Strategic Partner Explored
GM Structural Cost Reduction Run Rate Target of $5 Billion by End of 2006

also might be about the 1.1 billion dollar loss in the 3ed quarter:

http://media.gm.com/servlet/GatewayServlet?target=http://image.emerald.gm.com/gmnews/viewmonthlyreleasedetail.do?domain=74&docid=19613

also might be about the 1.1 billion dollar loss in the 3ed quarter:

http://media.gm.com/servlet/GatewayServlet?target=http://image.emerald.gm.com/gmnews/viewmonthlyreleasedetail.do?domain=74&docid=19613


CNN just said 1.6 billion dollar loss in the 3rd.

CNN just said 1.6 billion dollar loss in the 3rd.
might be, i didn't read the whole press report.

might be, i didn't read the whole press report.

They just corrected it back down to 1.1 billion, so I am guessing that is the right number. I am guessing that Delphi was the card that G.M. needed to get the UAW to comply.

1.1 billion GLOBALLY, 1.6 billion in the US.

So they're making money in other markets?

No wonder everyone is going out of the US to build cars.

China bought them out.

New Camaro will have the same crash test results as this vehicle:

http://paultan.org/archives/2005/10/07/jiangling-landwind-x6-crash-test-outside-view/

http://paultan.org/archives/2005/10/07/jiangling-landwind-x6-crash-test-passenger-cabin/

:lolhard

GM and UAW Reach Tentative Agreement on Health Care

Agreement to Reduce Retiree Health-care Liability by About $15 Billion


Agreement to Reduce Retiree Health-care Liability by About $15 Billion
Sale of Controlling Interest in GMAC to Strategic Partner Explored
GM Structural Cost Reduction Run Rate Target of $5 Billion by End of 2006
DETROIT – General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement early today to reduce GM’s health-care costs significantly while maintaining high quality health-care benefits for its hourly employees and retirees in the United States .

The tentative agreement, subject to finalized language and UAW-GM member ratification, is projected to reduce GM's retiree health-care (OPEB) liabilities by about $15 billion, or 25 percent of the company’s hourly health-care liability, and cut GM's annual employee health-care expense by about $3 billion on a pre-tax basis. Cash savings are estimated to be about $1 billion a year.

The tentative agreement also includes contributions to a new independent Defined Contribution Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) that will be used to mitigate the impact of reduced GM health-care coverage on individual hourly retirees. The new independent VEBA will be partially funded by GM contributions of $1 billion in each of three years – currently expected to be 2006, 2007 and 2011. Additional modest funding opportunities are under discussion, contingent on GM’s improved financial performance.

Wagoner praised the UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Vice President Dick Shoemaker for their leadership and hard work in coming to today’s agreement.

“These negotiations were done in a positive, cooperative, problem-solving spirit,” Wagoner said in remarks to employees at GM’s global headquarters in Detroit . “While it may have taken some time to reach this cooperative solution, I think it was time well-spent.”

Specific details regarding modifications to the health-care plan will be shared with affected employees and retirees soon. Wagoner said the modified plan will continue to provide high quality health care for GM’s more than 750,000 U.S. hourly employees and dependents, retirees and surviving spouses.

Additionally, GM and the UAW have agreed to continue to look at other options to further reduce health-care expenses and to improve other areas of competitiveness.

“GM and the UAW have renewed our joint commitment to work together on a broad scale to continue to reduce the cost and improve the quality of health care,” Wagoner said. “We continue to be concerned that this issue is of great importance for the future of overall U.S. competitiveness. We would welcome a more proactive role from elected officials at the national and state levels in broad-based strategies to address the U.S. health-care crisis.”

Other Cost Reductions
GM is committed to 100 percent or more capacity utilization of its plants by 2008, to further reduce structural costs. This means the company will need to close additional assembly and component plants and reduce its manufacturing employment levels by 25,000 or more jobs. This would come on top of the 1 million-unit capacity reduction that has been achieved over the past three years.

“Over the past four months, we have done a lot of detailed work on this, and have at this point a reasonably clear line of sight on our overall manufacturing restructuring plan,” Wagoner said. “Our next steps will be to work this plan in detail with the affected unions. We are planning to announce further details on this manufacturing restructuring by the end of this year.

Wagoner noted that GM already has made significant progress in reducing structural costs, lowering salaried, executive and contract employee costs and improving productivity. U.S. salaried employee headcount has been reduced 30 percent in the past five years, and continued reductions are planned for 2006.

“We have accomplished this in an orderly way, without disruption to our ability to execute our key business strategies, and we are now at global competitive levels of salaried productivity, although we know we need to keep raising the bar.”

Recently, GM’s salaried U.S. employees and retirees were informed of additional changes to their health-care benefits, including higher medical co-pays. In addition, as announced earlier, there is no program for salary increases, no bonuses and no enhanced variable pay for 2005 for GM’s salaried employees and executives.

Wagoner acknowledged that these difficult decisions will have an impact on many GM employees.

“We will do our best to minimize this impact on each of you and your families,” he told employees. “We hope you will understand that, with these difficult actions, we will help to ensure a viable and growing GM for the future.”

With all the cost-reduction initiatives in place, GM expects to reduce its structural cost by a $5 billion run rate by the end of 2006. The 2006 full-year impact depends on timing of approvals of the health-care changes.

“While this sounds like a large number, we recognize that it only goes part of the way we need to go to put GM North America in the fully competitive position that is necessary to maintain and enhance our future viability and growth. This is a very big step that we will build on as we go forward.”

In addition, GM is targeting a $2 billion gross reduction in material costs in 2006, despite higher commodity prices and troubled supplier situations, yielding a net reduction of $1 billion after including the cost of significant product enhancements.

These estimates exclude any possible impact from Delphi ’s Chapter 11 reorganization.

Two major opportunities to reduce material costs are optimizing GM’s sourcing footprint with the most competitive supplier sources, and leveraging the globalization of GM’s product development, Wagoner said.

GMAC
Wagoner also announced that GM is exploring the possible sale of a controlling interest in General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC) to a strategic partner, with the goal of restoring GMAC’s investment grade rating and renewing its access to low-cost financing.

In addition, GMAC said it will continue to evaluate strategic and structural alternatives to help ensure that its residential mortgage business, Residential Capital Corp., or ResCap, retains its investment grade credit ratings.

Impact Due to Delphi ’s Chapter 11 Proceedings

GM's tentative health-care agreement with the UAW provides former GM employees who became Delphi employees the potential to earn up to seven years of credited service for purposes of eligibility for certain health-care benefits under the GM/UAW Benefit Guarantee. Due to the net effect of reductions in its health-care costs and this expanded eligibility for credited service, GM isrevising its estimate of the range of its potential exposure to costs under the Benefit Guarantee from the previously reported $0 to $11 billion range, to $0 to $12 billion.

Although GM management is unable to estimate an amount of loss, if any, that GM may sustain due to Delphi 's Chapter 11 proceeding, and continues to evaluate whether, when and to what extent GM may need to record a related liability, it continues to believe that amounts closer to the midpoint of the range are considered more possible than amounts at either end of the range.

General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), the world’s largest automaker, has been the global industry sales leader since 1931. Founded in 1908, GM today employs about 325,000 people around the world. It has manufacturing operations in 32 countries and its vehicles are sold in 200 countries . In 2004, GM sold nearly 9 million cars and trucks globally, up 4 percent and the second-highest total in the company’s history. GM’s global headquarters are at the GM Renaissance Center in Detroit . More information on GM can be found at www.gm.com.

###

Forward-looking Statements
In this press release and in related comments by General Motors management, our use of the words “expect, anticipate, design, estimate, forecast, initiative, objective, plan, goal, project, outlook, priorities, targets, intend, evaluate, seek” and similar expressions is intended to identify forward looking statements. While these statements represent our current judgment on what the future may hold, and we believe these judgments are reasonable, actual results may differ materially due to numerous important factors that are described in GM’s most recent report on SEC Form 10-K, which may be revised or supplemented in subsequent reports on SEC Forms 10-Q and 8-K. Such factors include, among others, the following: the ability of GM to complete a transaction with a strategic investor regarding a controlling interest in GMAC, while maintaining a significant stake in GMAC, securing separate credit ratings and low cost funding to sustain growth for GMAC and ResCap and maintaining the mutually beneficial relationship between GMAC and GM; changes in relations with unions and employees/retirees and the legal interpretations of the agreements with those unions with regard to employees/retirees; changes in economic conditions, currency exchange rates or political stability; shortages of and price increases for fuel, labor strikes or work stoppages; health-care costs; market acceptance of the corporation's new products; pace of product introductions; significant changes in the competitive environment; changes in laws, regulations and tax rates; and, the ability of the corporation to achieve reductions in cost and employment levels to realize production efficiencies and implement capital expenditures at levels and times planned by management.

G.M. stock has gone up $3.28 on the news.

G.M. stock has gone up $3.28 on the news.
It takes some pretty significant news to have your stock go up the same day you post a $1.1 billion loss.

So that means that GM will be footing $3 bil in health care next year? $5 bil to start with, shave off $3 bil, then add in their contribution to the VEBA, $1 bil?

Wait, so if this announcement had taken affect last year they could have actually posted gains instead of losses? Wow... interesting. Sounds like great news. What did the union gain from this? A better chance of actually having a company to work for at all in 10 years?:D

where are you guys seeing it going up $3?
edit: ok, for some reason the google stock page is loading with everything offset to the bottom of the page. It seems that the day started off 3$ higher. If someone doesn't mind educated me real quick, who decides what the stock is worth? It also seems the ford and dcx went up to.

GM is up 12% because of the union deal, even though they lost $1.6 Billion

China bought them out.

New Camaro will have the same crash test results as this vehicle:

http://paultan.org/archives/2005/10/07/jiangling-landwind-x6-crash-test-outside-view/

http://paultan.org/archives/2005/10/07/jiangling-landwind-x6-crash-test-passenger-cabin/

:lolhard

That is some funny sh!t.

where are you guys seeing it going up $3?
edit: ok, for some reason the google stock page is loading with everything offset to the bottom of the page. It seems that the day started off 3$ higher. If someone doesn't mind educated me real quick, who decides what the stock is worth? It also seems the ford and dcx went up to.

To oversimplify it, it's just based on how many people are willing to pay for the shares at each price point and how many people are willing to sell shares at each price point; then factor in the supply of people willing vs the demand of people buying.

LOL. "The good news is that we plan to produce a new Camaro. The bad news is that it will be called the Renault Camaro."


:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

That's it! Go stand in the corner and write "I will never even THINK of Camaro and Renault together in this lifetime!" 1,000 times............

LOL. "The good news is that we plan to produce a new Camaro. The bad news is that it will be called the Renault Camaro."
Yeah, I've heard of that one. That's the Aveo based five door "coupe" three cylinder Hybrid, no?

:D

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

That's it! Go stand in the corner and write "I will never even THINK of Camaro and Renault together in this lifetime!" 1,000 times............

Heh, it does make some kind of ironic sense though, Camaro being a French word and all.

LOL. "The good news is that we plan to produce a new Camaro. The bad news is that it will be called the Renault Camaro."
That reminds me of the time my friend called the local Chevy dealership for a part for his Corvette. The lady asked him if it was a CHEVROLET Corvette. He said "no its a KIA Corvette". This lady actually worked at the dealership.
That was some funny stuff.

It takes some pretty significant news to have your stock go up the same day you post a $1.1 billion loss.

:lol:

Seems almost insider traderish how Kerkorian bought an extra 2.1 million shares of a company only 5 days before it posts news/a gain like it did today.

I'm not saying it was insider knowledge, but that is a damn nice coincidence considering $3 a share increase on roughly 21 million total shares (I think it is around there) is roughly $70 million profit in one day.

Wish it were me!

Seems almost insider traderish how Kerkorian bought an extra 2.1 million shares of a company only 5 days before it posts news/a gain like it did today.

I'm not saying it was insider knowledge, but that is a damn nice coincidence considering $3 a share increase on roughly 21 million total shares (I think it is around there) is roughly $70 million profit in one day.

Wish it were me!
Perhaps he just sees what other people, like Guy, see: That GMs assets currently are much larger than its predicted worth. If I had money that wasn't already invested in a nice safe account that I could just play with I would sure put some into GM, but alas I don't.

I'm sure there's 2 sides to every story... like GM using the media to slander the UAW as a way of covering up the company's mistakes of the past. The UAW must learn to become more flexible. The public perception of the UAW seems to be one of hostility, opposition and repugnance. There comes a time when a person stops asking for more favors from someone who's bleeding to death. Hopefully that time is now for the UAW. Toyota and the other Japanese manufactures don't deal with the issues facing the big 3... maybe if the UAW could change their ways, the Japanese-American automakers will allow them in...

GM fast tracks factory closures

Wagoner: Company has 'clear line of sight' on plants' restructuring, lopping 25,000 jobs.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. is intensifying its push to cut 25,000 factory jobs and close several plants over the next few years.

The moves are critical to GM's goal of running its 24 North American assembly plants at 100 percent capacity by 2008, up from 88 percent this year.

"Over the past four months, we have done a lot of detailed work on this, and have at this point a reasonably clear line of sight on our overall manufacturing restructuring plan," GM Chairman Rick Wagoner said. "Our next steps will be to work this plan in detail with the affected unions. We are planning to announce further details on this manufacturing restructuring by the end of this year."

Several plants are shaping up as likely targets for closure, which likely would occur after GM renegotiates its labor contract with the United Auto Workers in 2007.

Analysts say a number of factors will determine which plants are shuttered -- the age of the factory, the amount of investment GM has made in it over the past 15 or 20 years, productivity and production flexibility. Labor relations will also play a key role.

http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/18/C01-352381.htm

Perhaps he just sees what other people, like Guy, see: That GMs assets currently are much larger than its predicted worth.

Most other people see the assets, but they also see the overwhelming debt load.

Of course, a GMAC spin-off would take care of much of that (GMAC borrows just about every penny that they loan out to consumers), and a run through bankruptcy court could be used to clear up the remaining $40B or so.

I was really surprised that GM got anywhere with the UAW, considering how little they obtained from the CAW during the recent contract talks.

I was really surprised that GM got anywhere with the UAW, considering how little they obtained from the CAW during the recent contract talks.

I suspect Canadian legacy costs are much, much lower and the fully loaded hourly cost is in Canada is still advantageous.

I thought maybe they would tell us Camaro is coming back on the front wheel drive chassis...called GM80 :D That would suck. I'd loose all faith in GM and start buying anything but GM.