The sale of Opel to the French carmaker PSA is completed: Since Tuesday, the Rüsselsheim car maker is part of the PSA Group. The employees will have to adjust to a horse cure.
Factory premises of Opel in Rüsselsheim
Tuesday, 01.08.2017
09:23 clock
The carmaker Opel is now part of the French PSA Group, The contracts with the seller General Motors be completed, said Opel on Tuesday in Ruesselsheim. Based on the sales figures, the takeover will create the second-largest carmaker in Europe, after Volkswagen, with a market share of around 17 percent.
Opel had belonged to General Motors since 1929 and was at times the largest carmaker in Germany. Since 1999, however, the Rüsselsheimers, with their British sister brand Vauxhall, had not delivered an operating profit for the year.
At Opel is now a renovation, the PSA boss Carlos Tavares wants to leave the German management. The reorganization is not controlled from Paris, Tavares had always stressed. The rehabilitation plan will be supervised by the new Opel boss Michael Lohscheller created and should be available within 100 days. From 2020, a profit margin of two percent is to be achieved, which should increase to 2026 by six percent.
The former CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann leaves the company, For his successor Lohscheller, the former PSA controller Philippe de Rovira joins as chief financial officer. Three new Divisional Board members were also appointed.
“Opel remains German and Vauxhall remains British, perfectly complementing our existing portfolio of the French brands Peugeot, Citroën and DS Automobiles,” explained Tavares. It would create a “European Champion”. The EU Commission has approved the acquisition, which has been under negotiation since March, under antitrust law,
PSA pays for the GM Europe business including the British Opel sister Vauxhall and the financial sector around 2.2 billion euros. GM Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens has estimated the cost of the sale at the equivalent of 4.7 billion euros, because GM still assumes pension obligations for employees. Opel / Vauxhall employs about 38,000 people in seven European countries, half of them in Germany.