The future of General Motors’ European operations was thrown further into confusion Tuesday when the automaker said the sale of its Saab Automobile subsidiary in Sweden had fallen through, The New York Times reported. The expected buyer, Koenigsegg Automotive, backed out of the deal, G.M. said. The announcement caught the American automaker, which is also struggling to restructure its Adam Opel unit in Europe, by surprise. General Motors is “obviously very disappointed with the decision,” Fritz Henderson, the G.M. chief executive, said in a statement.

Swedish media warns that Saab Automobile is close to bankruptcy, a day after luxury carmaker Koenigsegg abandoned its bid to buy the group from its US parent General Motors, The Swedish Wire reported. "The Death Knell," financial daily Dagens Industri headlined on its front page, while the country's leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter blazed "It's Over Now." In an analysis piece, conservative daily Svenska Dagbladet said "everything was pointing to the closure of Saab," adding it was "unlikely" a new buyer would turn up.

Amid new signs that the euro-zone economic recovery is gathering headway, Germany continues to prepare for a possible relapse as other governments plot exit strategies, The Wall Street Journal reported. Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that government-funded programs to keep people employed by reducing work hours have helped prevent broad layoffs in Germany and will be extended. Ms. Merkel told a business conference in Berlin that the length of the extension for short-hour program was is still being discussed.

General Motors asked European governments to help pay most of the $4.9 billion that it needs to restructure its struggling European operations, The Washington Post reported. At talks in Brussels, E.U. nations where GM has plants vowed to avoid individual negotiations with the company before a Dec. 4 meeting, where they will coordinate their response to GM's restructuring plans, due later this week.

Union representatives hope the future of Opel's 50,000 workers in Europe will become clearer when they meet on Wednesday with General Motors' interim regional chief Nick Reilly to discuss restructuring plans, Reuters reported. "It's of crucial importance to us that there is a complete financing until 2014. We do not want at all to find ourselves in the situation that they cancel once again (investments in) models and new development work," Lothar Sorger, Opel's deputy labor leader at its Kaiserslautern site in Germany, said on Monday.

Time is running out for German political leaders to provide financial help for General Motors Co.'s European Opel division—or risk the loss of more domestic jobs, The Wall Street Journal reported. Angered by GM's surprise move to abandon plans to sell Opel this month, German politicians have so far taken a belligerent stance and are threatening to withhold state aid altogether. Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle suggested this week that Opel may no longer qualify for aid regardless of what restructuring plan GM presents, a sentiment echoed by several other influential politicians.

General Motors Co. said it expects to release a full restructuring plan for its Opel and Vauxhall operations in mid December, but did not specify the amount of cuts to capacity and jobs it would seek, The Associated Press reported. GM Europe released a statement late Thursday in response to what it said was a "misrepresentation" by the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), which claimed that GM wanted to maintain all its European plants.

A senior General Motors Co. executive said Tuesday that the final restructuring plan for GM's Opel/Vauxhall unit still could hinge on aid commitments from European governments, Dow Jones reported. The company aims to advance a new €3.3 billion turnaround plan for the European operation in two to three weeks and wants aid to supplement further investment of its own. Nick Reilly, president of GM's international operations, said there was no "bidding war" among European countries looking to preserve local auto jobs with financial support.

The Paris Commerce Court has postponed a decision on the future of troubled French fashion house Christian Lacroix to Dec. 1, the administrator for Lacroix said on Tuesday. This was because the main potential buyers for the fashion house, Gulf investor Hassan bin Ali al-Nuaimi, and France's Bernard Krief Consulting, "could not show the documentation certifying the funds needed for the acquisition were available," Regis Valliot said. If by the Dec.

AIB, Ireland's biggest bank, said in a trading update today that it is expecting 2009 bad debt charges to rise to €5.3 billion, up from a previous forecast of €4.3 billion, Finfacts reported. The bank said in an interim management statement, that the charges were weighted towards the €24 billion loan portfolio, that may potentially be transferred to the State "bad bank," the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). The loans mainly related to the Republic of Ireland division, with some in the UK divisions.