Ford's selling its Mazda stakes; GM and Chrysler are in merger talks and now, the latest rumor to emerge is that Chrysler LLC's owner, Cerberus is thinking of dismantling the company and selling its assets to various companies/automakers. We're pretty sure that we've missed out on a few rumors, but let's concentrate on Reuters' latest "Rumorville" report. The site claims that private equity firm Cerberus is in talks to sell all or part of Chrysler LLC's operations to Renault and GM, according to people familiar with the talks -jeez, these people must be doing a lot of talking... -Continued
In particular, Renault is said to be interested either in forming an alliance with the troubled American automaker or getting back the Jeep brand which it had sold to Chrysler along with American Motors Company(AMC) in 1987.
As for GM, those talkative people said that there are various scenarios in consideration including the possibility of the General swapping its 49-percent share of GMAC (owned by Cerberus) for Chrysler's auto operations.
If you want our opinion, apparently there's no smoke without a fire and something is going on with Chrysler. It could be something serious or it could be that Cerberus is just trying to explore alternative plans if all goes to hell and it's forced to let Chrysler LLC go. But don't be surprised if at the end of the day, Chrysler LLC still belongs to Cerberus.
Link: Reuters
