SAAB lost its Chinese investor

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For some of my readers this is not coming as a surprise, but the marriage between automotive company SAAB - represented by the Dutch Spyker - and the Chinese auto-manufacturer Hawtai has already been dissolved before consummation, here according to Reuters.

Hawtai had planning to invest 150 million euro in the struggling European car maker, but according to the announcements it was not able to secure the needed permissions from the government.

Reuters:

"Since it became clear that Hawtai was not able to obtain all the necessary consents, the parties were forced to terminate the agreement with Saab Automobile and Spyker with immediate effect," Spyker said in a statement.

Hawtai's failure follows similar cases where Chinese companies have not managed to complete deals, including Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery's bid for GM's Hummer, which collapsed in 2010 and China's Xinmao did not have enough time to obtain approvals to continue its bid for Dutch cable maker Draka.

Spyker/SAAB were obvious in a hurry to get much needed cash in, and hurry is never a good adviser in this kind of huge investment, not in China, but possibly nowhere. Spyker is spinning about other opportunities, but this might as well be the closing chapter for the company.

Related articles

• Saab loses Chinese funding deal (bbc.co.uk)
• Great Wall Motor talks with Spyker about tie-up (theglobeandmail.com)
• Saab being pimped around the world by Victor Muller (ktwop.wordpress.com)
• Muller says Saab could sell $10,000 Chinese autos in States (autoblog.com)
• Saab gets €150m lifeline from China's Hawtai Motor Group (telegraph.co.uk)