Asia group acquires bankrupt Saab

A CHINESE-Japanese investment group yesterday agreed to buy Saab Automobile and convert the bankrupt Swedish manufacturer into a maker of electric cars.

The first vehicle under the plan will be based on the company’s 93 car, and the model will go on sale early in 2014, purchaser National Electric Vehicle Sweden and Saab’s bankruptcy administrators said. The parties agreed not to disclose the transaction price.

The purchasing group is led by Japanese investment firm Sun Investment and Hong Kong-based renewable energy power plant builder National Modern Energy Holdings. Competing suitors for Saab included Jinhua, Chinabased Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile and made a revised bid exceeding 4-billion krona ($567m) as late as June 8.

Saab, the maker of the 9-5 sedan and 9-4X crossover vehicle, has not built cars since an initial production halt in March last year, and it filed for bankruptcy in December.

Trollhaettan-based Saab has been unprofitable for most of two decades, and General Motors (GM), which acquired full control of the manufacturer in 2000, sold it in February 2010 to Dutch supercar maker Spyker.

The Swedish car maker has hovered near bankruptcy several times, including in 1989, the year before GM bought a 50% stake. The US company, seeking to stem losses, planned in late 2009 to shut Saab, as it did with the Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac divisions in the US, until Spyker CEO Victor Muller persuaded it to sell the brand to him.

After sales peaked at 133 000 deliveries in 2006, Saab sold just 31 700 vehicles in 2010. Deliveries were hurt that year because Saab needed longer than expected to restore production flows after GM emptied the factory and cut the brand’s supplier ties, Mr Muller said last year.

No sales figures have been released for last year. Eric Geers, a former Saab spokesman, estimated in February that the Swedish brand sold 10 000 to 15 000 vehicles last year.

Saab’s roots date to the 1937 establishment of aircraft manufacturer Svenska Aeroplan, which began making cars in 1947.

The vehicle business was split from the aerospace operations — now called Saab AB — in the 1990s. About 3 600 people worked at Saab before its bankruptcy. Bloomberg