Germany

Italian automaker Fiat SpA is still interested in Germany's Opel despite losing a bid to take over the General Motors Corp unit, Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said on Friday, Reuters reported. Fiat lost out last week to Canadian car parts maker Magna International Inc in a bid for Opel, but Marchionne's comments suggested Fiat might yet be a factor in the deal. "The deal technically is not closed, we will see," Marchionne said, adding that Fiat had not yet used a €1 billion ($1.42 billion) line of credit from banks.

General Motors Corp. sold more cars in Britain than anywhere else in Europe last year. But it was Germany, and not Britain, that agreed to rescue GM’s European Opel unit with bridge loans last week to ease a sale to Magna International Inc. Prime Minister Gordon Brown hasn’t committed money to a bailout, raising concern U.K. employees will be cut after the deal as more Germans are spared. Opel sold almost 350,000 vehicles in the U.K. last year under the Vauxhall brand, the No. 2 seller in the market behind Ford Motor Co.

Germany heaved a sigh of relief on Saturday over a deal with Canadian auto parts group Magna, General Motors and the U.S. government to save carmaker Opel from the imminent bankruptcy of its U.S. parent, Reuters reported. The accord sealed after six hours of talks in Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices still needs final approval but seemed set to ringfence Opel and its 50,000 workers in Europe from a GM Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing widely expected for Monday. Merkel said U.S. President Barack Obama--due to visit Germany next week--helped swing the deal with a telephone call on Friday.

Magna, the Canadian car parts maker, and Sberbank, Russia’s biggest state-controlled bank, are poised to become the new shared owners of Vauxhall, the Times Online reported. It is believed that Magna, Sberbank, which is backed by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminium tycoon, and General Motors (GM), the American carmaker, have signed a memorandum of understanding in Germany broadly agreeing to undisclosed terms to carve up the ownership of Vauxhall and Opel between them.

Upping the rhetorical as well as the financial ante in what has become a high-stakes poker game that will decide the fate of Opel and the rest of General Motor’s operations in Europe, Fiat’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, announced that he would skip government talks Friday in Berlin to provide Opel with emergency aid if G.M. files for bankruptcy, The New York Times reported. Fiat and Mr. Marchionne are still hoping to acquire Opel, and are wary of letting their main rival in the talks, Magna, gain the upper hand.

Germany's financial regulator warned of serious problems at Hypo Real Estate Holding AG six months before the lender was rescued in a massive bailout, but the regulator lacked powers to act and the government ignored its warnings, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The documents--brought to light in preparation for parliamentary committee hearings Thursday to examine the government's handling of Hypo's bailout--are likely to prove politically charged ahead of national elections in September. For months, Germany lectured the U.S.

Germany hasn't reached a decision yet on providing state-backed bridge financing to General Motors Corp.'s Adam Opel GmbH to give the unit more time to clinch a deal with a new investor because the U.S. parent company has come up with a new cash demand, German government officials said early Thursday. A decision over Opel has been delayed to Friday, Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told reporters after late night negotiations in Berlin that dragged on into the early hours of Thursday.

The possible insolvency of German department-store operator Arcandor AG could have an impact on a property-investment consortium led by the Whitehall Funds, which owns a 51% stake in a portfolio that includes 85 of the retailer's Karstadt stores as well as other properties, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some of the buildings are among Germany's top retail locations, such as the KaDeWe store in Berlin or the Oberpollinger store in Munich.

Bankruptcy for Opel, the European unit of General Motors, remains a distinct possibility despite three offers for the unit, the German economy minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, said in an interview published on Sunday, The New York Times reported. Though Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is to meet on Monday to consider the bids, there is no guarantee that any will be accepted, Mr. Guttenberg was quoted as saying by Bild am Sonntag. Speaking to journalists in Berlin on Sunday, Mr.

Fiat SpA is convinced it has more than a 50 percent chance of succeeding in its bid for Opel because it does not think the other contenders have the expertise to revive the car maker, Reuters reported on an Italian newspaper story. But General Motors Corp, which is selling Opel, has Fiat at the bottom of a list of three contenders, German magazine Der Spiegel said in its online edition, citing what it described as an internal GM ranking list of the bids.